Confused about todays updates

[DanS]

Alias is one of those "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no
evil" people. Plus Alias is also a Linux zealot and
believes a large percentage of computer users are actually
using Linux (even the father of Linux, his sister and
father are using Windows). But I guess that comes with the
territory being part of a small tribe like Alias is. ;-)

None of that, either true or not, has any bearing on your
advice to never do Windows updates.....

I see no rebuttal as to why your advice isn't "best if
ignored".

Why bother replying at all, unless your main purpose was just
to degrade and insult Alias....which it appears to be.

 

[Ken Blake]

BillW50 wrote:

Microsoft [...] think their AV is hot stuff (which only catches 15%
of the bad stuff)

Bestsecuritytips found Microsoft only 25% effective.
Microsoft Defender worst rootkit remover?
http://www.bestsecuritytips.com/news+article.storyid+62.htm

Oh, I had rather assumed you were referring to Security Essentials, not
five year old Defender ...

I assumed that too, since he said "their *AV*." Windows Defender is
*not* an anti-virus program, it's an anti-spyware program.

Microsoft Security Essentials is the only anti-virus program that
Microsoft has ever produced and it's also one of the best ones
available.

Defender, however, is far from the best anti-spyware program.

 

[Ken Blake]

Even if you said you have seen little green men in your bedroom, you
wouldn't be more believable. If you want some credibility, you need to
have some reliable references.

I completely agree with you. Alias's posts are useless and he has long
been killfiled here. But I would consider it a personal favor if you
wouldn't reply to and quote his messages. I don't want to have to read
his crap.

 

[Nil]

Microsoft Security Essentials is the only anti-virus program that
Microsoft has ever produced and it's also one of the best ones
available.

Depends on what you mean by "produced" Microsoft has had two or three
earlier anti-virus programs included with or available for their OS
products, dating back to the DOS and early Windows days. I believe
those products were bought or licensed from other companies. I recall
that one of them looked a lot like a simplified version of the Norton
Antivirus product of the day.

 

[Brian Matthews]

Both were for Net Framework, two versions.
Both were unchecked.
I only have version 4 client installed.
Do I really need them ?

Thanks


KenW

MS calls them security updates. I always update the critical updates.
This last one updated with no problem. No reboot even needed. And it's
been running fine ever since the update.

 

[blank]

Never been bitten by updates before, I take it? Anytime you modify an OS,
you have a chance of breaking things like drivers and applications. And
sometimes the whole OS can break.

I believe in experimentation. And I have lots of computers here and I
stopped updating half of them a few years ago. And the ones that I stopped
updating run better than the ones that I religiously update all of the
time. And the ones that I update, I often have to fix it to get it running
again. The ones that isn't updated, continue to run just fine.

There is an old saying that don't fix what isn't broken. But many continue
to fix what isn't broken all of the time and then wonder why they have
problems. ;-)

It is my belief after decades of doing this, is unless an update fixes a
problem you are actually having. Then just skip it. As it is meant for
somebody else and not you.

Unless those of you who usually disagree with Bill are going to accuse him
of lying, I would think the above is pretty good evidence of the validity of
his view. Surely the ultimate test is take two groups of machines: block
updates on one and allow them on the other. Then compare results. That
appears to be what he is saying and its pretty persuasive!

 

[blank]

Microsoft also recommended Windows ME, Vista, and MS Bob too. And they
think their AV is hot stuff (which only catches 15% of the bad stuff) and
Windows Live Mail is all you need. Now if you have any doubts about
Microsoft wisdom at all, I think you should explorer that idea further.

....and they also trumpeted DOS 4.10 and 5.1 too (for those who remember)
full of serious bugs that had to be ironed out with DOS 6.0 (a good product)
on live systems, causing enormous headaches for programmers and users. And
later they pulled the plug on their superb product Vb6 and replaced it with
the useless dot.net (with no proper printer function)...

 

[blank]

Microsoft [...] think their AV is hot stuff (which only catches 15%
of the bad stuff)

I'd be interested in any reference(s) to support that ...

if you have any doubts about
Microsoft wisdom at all, I think you should explorer that idea further.

If you take that to its logical conclusion, you'd not use Microsoft
software at all.

That's not logical. If a dish on the table is badly made it doesn't mean all
of them are. M$oft is a mighty big company with thousands of persons working
for it. *Some* of them (probably most) are capable and have integrity...

I use lots of excellent Microsoft products having watched its history of
behaviour and tried nearly all of its products, I mistrust the Company and
its philosophies would not touch some of its products.

I wonder if any of the regular posters work for Microsoft? I don't
(surprise surprise)and it's pretty certain that Bill doesn't!.

 

[blank]

Me either, since Win 95. Billw50's advice is best if ignored.

In your opinion! My experience since the 4k memory Z80 CPU days is that
lots of it is valid. Sometimes it sounds like conspiarncy theory but then
sometimes there are conspirators! I do not agree with everything Bill says
but it is arrogant to write it all off,

 

[blank]

In your opinion! My experience since the 4k memory Z80 CPU days is that
lots of it is valid. Sometimes it sounds like conspiarncy theory but then
sometimes there are conspirators! I do not agree with everything Bill says
but it is arrogant to write it all off,

Sorry about my bad proof-reading!

 

[Andy Burns]

Unless those of you who usually disagree with Bill are going to accuse him
of lying

I don't accuse him of lying at all ... but I can't stand back and let
someone ask "should I install hotfixes" and get the answer "no, you're
better off without them" without making sure they get other viewpoints.

I would think the above is pretty good evidence of the validity of
his view. Surely the ultimate test is take two groups of machines: block
updates on one and allow them on the other. Then compare results. That
appears to be what he is saying and its pretty persuasive!

I'm willing to bet that Bill's PCs are firewalled, anti-virused etc, and
he doesn't visit too many dodgy web-sites, some people may not be so
well protected ... and generally people would on balance be better
having the fixes.

Unless Bill is willing to state that some of his non-updated machines
are directly on the Internet as honey pots?

 

[Bruce Hagen]

I am sure Windows 7 would run just fine without NET.

XP wouldn't even start without V: 1.1.

 

[Ken Blake]

I wonder if any of the regular posters work for Microsoft? I don't
(surprise surprise)and it's pretty certain that Bill doesn't!.

Microsoft stays far away from newsgroups these days. The only
possibility of a Microsoft employee here would be if he were posting
with an assumed name (and even that is highly unlikely).

 

[Char Jackson]

Unless those of you who usually disagree with Bill are going to accuse him
of lying, I would think the above is pretty good evidence of the validity of
his view. Surely the ultimate test is take two groups of machines: block
updates on one and allow them on the other. Then compare results. That
appears to be what he is saying and its pretty persuasive!

I don't find it persuasive in the slightest. Educate yourself about
modern day malware. If it makes itself known to the user of the
infected computer, it has most likely failed in its mission. Bill's
attitude is naive, careless, and dangerous to the rest of us who share
the Internet with him.

 

[DanS]

Unless those of you who usually disagree with Bill are
going to accuse him of lying, I would think the above is
pretty good evidence of the validity of his view. Surely
the ultimate test is take two groups of machines: block
updates on one and allow them on the other. Then compare
results. That appears to be what he is saying and its
pretty persuasive!

I'm not a real big updater either, but I don't find the
argument persuasive at all.

Any 'test' of such a theory would need to be done on machines
that all have identical hardware, software, and all need to be
used, regularly, to do very similar tasks. They all need to be
set up with identical configurations for services too, and
whatever other tweaks are done.

Also, prior to the 'test', you'd also need to figure out how
you are going to actually measure what is "better". Are you
simply going to run a bunch of benchmarking s/w and see if the
numbers are "better". Or are you going with a "human test" and
get peoples perception of speed and operation of said
computer?

What concessions will be made for the test ? For example, with
XP, from SP1 to SP2, MS actually added features to SP2, like
"Security Center", which when running will use some CPU ticks
on its own, assumingly taking them away from somewhere else.
So what do you do....do the SP2 update, then disable 'Security
Center' ?

I didn't say he was lying.

Here....as usual, I'll let his own words speak for him..."If
you want some credibility, you need to have some reliable
references."

Where are Bill's reliable references ?

I didn't see a link or a cite or quote from anywhere else.

 

[BillW50]

In

I agree. Updates have broken my setup too many times, especially .net
updates. I don't update unless having a problem, which is almost
never.

That to me is very good advice Boris. It is funny to watch many ask for
help after an update had broken something. Then after it ends up being
fixed for one reason or another, they believe they never had a problem
with updates. Go figure.

 

[BillW50]

In

I'm not a real big updater either, but I don't find the
argument persuasive at all.

Any 'test' of such a theory would need to be done on machines
that all have identical hardware, software, and all need to be
used, regularly, to do very similar tasks. They all need to be
set up with identical configurations for services too, and
whatever other tweaks are done.

I have heard for years that some outsiders claim that their computers
run better not updating. I also saw this a lot being an IBM OS/2 Warp
beta tester. Actually the beta test was really going well and virtually
no bugs. Everything looked really promising. Then IBM released the gold
version and for some dumb reason, they changed zillions of drivers
without beta testing them. And the word was half of the people couldn't
even install Warp. I couldn't either from CD, but I could from floppy.
Something like 15 floppies or something.

Later updates came out called FixPaks. Most of them broke far more than
they fixed. There was like 50 different builds of these things in two
years. And some bugs it had taken them 2 years to fix. And out of 50
some builds, only about 5 of them actually worked somewhat. This time
span was two years before Windows 95 to up to Windows 95. And I was so
sick and tired of OS/2 that I left it for good. It won't even install on
a drive larger than 512MB. As there is a bug that it thinks there is
less than 20MB there and refuse to install.

Back then, Windows v3.1 didn't really have security patches to speak of.
And there was one update called v3.11 and that was it. Windows 95 didn't
have much updates either. There were updated OEM versions, but not
retail versions. And one SP1 if I recall correctly and I didn't find
that one useful for most home users. As it fixed bugs that most would
never see anyway.

I don't recall much updates for Windows 98FE either. Except that for a
limited time, 98FE users could upgrade to 98SE for about 10 bucks. Now I
remember W98SE and ME of having many zillions of updates like we have
nowadays.

Having all of this experience, I was doing at least security updates, as
I believed they were a necessary evil. But when I bought my first Asus
EeePC back in '08 with only 4GB of SSD and XP SP2 installed. I had a new
problem. That SSD was soldered on the motherboard and you couldn't add
more. And if you tried to update it, you would run out of space very
quickly. And a computer with no disk space just won't run Windows. So
for the first time in my life, I was forced by Microsoft and Asus to NOT
to do updates.

I feared the worse of course. As without updates, this computer would be
a huge target for malware, right? Strangely enough, it wasn't. As even
this computer wasn't getting any viruses, rootkits, etc. So after a year
went by, I have lots of other computers. Like two more EeePC (these have
upgradeable SSD), three Gateway MX6124, six Gateway M465, three
Alienware M9700, two Alienware M9750, etc.

Having many of the same models and the same OS, I could leave some
without updates and some still being updated.

Also, prior to the 'test', you'd also need to figure out how
you are going to actually measure what is "better". Are you
simply going to run a bunch of benchmarking s/w and see if the
numbers are "better". Or are you going with a "human test" and
get peoples perception of speed and operation of said
computer?

What concessions will be made for the test ? For example, with
XP, from SP1 to SP2, MS actually added features to SP2, like
"Security Center", which when running will use some CPU ticks
on its own, assumingly taking them away from somewhere else.
So what do you do....do the SP2 update, then disable 'Security
Center' ?

I don't normally test for performance and benchmarking with and without
updates since most of them don't seem to change much. But I do test
different CPUs and memory configurations a lot. And the only really bad
update for performance was XP and going to SP2. I did that on about five
machines and all it ever did was to slow them down. Although what works
fine is to reinstall XP SP2 from scratch. And that always worked
wonderful. And I still feel that XP should be at least up to SP2.
Although I could test the original XP without updates someday and see
how well that works.

I didn't say he was lying.

Here....as usual, I'll let his own words speak for him..."If
you want some credibility, you need to have some reliable
references."

Where are Bill's reliable references ?

I didn't see a link or a cite or quote from anywhere else.

What is there to cite? Most experts only do updates and never test to
see what happens if they don't. And very few people actually take this
on at all. So I believe that more should be experimenting with updating
and not. As data from only a small handful doesn't qualify as much in
the sake of science.

I already know from my own experiments that the only updates worth
having are the ones that actually fix a problem that you are actually
having. But oddly enough, that is what experts were saying about 25
years ago. Experts today seemed to have forgotten this rule.

 

[blank]

(snip)

Bill's
attitude is naive, careless, and dangerous to the rest of us who share
the Internet with him.

Char. You have your opinion and he has his. You are assuming yours is
sacrosanct and therefore his must be wrong. Not a scientific approach. What
about "I believe that Bill's attitude...". What happend to IMHO, with the
accent on H?

 

[BillW50]

In

You're not an expert and your advice is not sound. One should update
and this is a cold stoned fact.

Scientific data isn't sound advice? What planet are you from? And I also
know you are a lemming and believe whatever marketing tells you to
believe. Many of us were also born that way until we wised up.

"He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my
contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the
spinal cord would suffice." -- Albert Einstein

"The important thing is not to stop questioning." -- Albert Einstein

 

[blank]

You're not an expert and your advice is not sound. One should update and
this is a cold stoned fact.

And you *are* one? (the expression is 'cold stone', but I suppose we could
allow 'stoned' as it's New Year...)