Windows Updates are important

[Eric the Grey]

So I always make sure they get applied when I see the icon on my work desktop. If I see them, they have been approved and pushed out by our server Admins. At home, I generally take a look for problems with them first, but normally just apply them all.

Background: We use Citrix servers, about 20 of them currently, not including those located at the disaster recovery site. Users connect to these when they log into One World from the plants. I do the same.

Come to find out that when a user is connected to a Citrix server that has windows updates waiting to be applied, the notification comes through to the users desktop, and WILL ALLOW THAT USER TO APPLY THEM!!! Some users can reboot, some cannot. I, being an administrator of sorts, can.

Imagine my surprise when I got suspicious earlier this month by having so many patches come my way. At first, I though it was patches to counter the trojan worm we had running rampant through the company, but noooo....

I started paying attention to exactly which patches were being applied, and found they were for Windows Server 2003, not an XP Desktop. Oops

Turns out, I've been applying patches out of cycle, AND rebooting servers while people were on them. Supposedly, the admins are working on a solution to this, but I'm still seeing the update notification. At least now I know what it is, and can avoid doing anything about it.

Way to go Me!


Eric the Grey

[Polenicus]

Whups!

Well, look at it this way... at least you know the Windows server patches got applied... Aheh...

[MrSmiley]

Heh. I've been suspicious enough that I seldom patch/update anything without reading the changelog and what's going on. Now a lot of things have good track records for new version = works better, but sadly not everything and definitely not Microsoft's stuff. So I'm always glancing over that stuff... In general, for people who don't know or don't care... apply everything, there's enough viruses out there based on Windows vulnerabilities that patching is probably the safe side. For anyone who KNOWS about their computers, keep an eye on things... or you could find yourself with the machine running clunkier because some patch uses more memory and is less efficient than the previous version.

And I'm not even going to mention my suspicions about some updates only being used to "push" people towards new hardware and higher clockspeed cpus.

[Broomjockey]

Now a lot of things have good track records for new version = works better,

I got burned by that yesterday, actually. NVidia official release of a driver caused my game to crash, hard. Turns out they released a newer version that fixed the problem about 3 days later, but I usually only check once/month. But I finally (a few hours later) found one person randomly referencing that it was a specific version of the driver causing the issue, so I went to see if I could get a different version. Low and behold...

[Fire_on_High]

Would we be talking Source engine?

Found out the hard way that they weren't BSin in the 181.22 notes about not playing nicely with HL2 and related. 182.05 seems to be QUITE a good fix, tho.

[Broomjockey]

Would we be talking Source engine?

Nope. Fallout 3. I think the longest I got was about 3 minutes before it crashed with that driver.

[Fire_on_High]

I think the longest I got was about 3 minutes before it crashed with that driver.

Ahh yes, I remember seeing that mentioned as well.

The real bitch of it? Hands down that was the fastest driver I've used for WoW...just sooo pissy with everything else that it wasn't remotely worth it. There're a few effects that spaz my card out and it cleaned most of those up...33-35 fps vs 5-8.

But no Counterstrike? No TF2? No thanks!

[EricKei]

Nope. Fallout 3. I think the longest I got was about 3 minutes before it crashed with that driver.

Wait, Fallout 3 has drivers that DON'T cause it to crash on a regular basis?! Where, if I may ask, would one find such a miraculous thing? (geforce 8600gts, xp, yes I know that this card series in particular has issues with the game. Hasn't kept me from playing, but at least I can't blow an entire night on it if I can't keep going for more than half an hour at a stretch x.x)

[Broomjockey]

Well, my old 8800 ran it perfectly fine on the WHQL drivers off the NVidia site. Just make sure you don't get the 180/181.20 ones.

[Fire_on_High]

182.05 is definitely worth a look, guys. I've been running em since the earlier post and they're rock solid, easily the best balance of speed and stability to date. Try em if you haven't already.

[technical.angel]

Windows Updates are important.

Nothing better than booting up a laptop to see the symbol of the globe with the windows flag pop up in the taskbar.

Nothing at all.