In ,
glee typed:
"BillW50" wrote in message
...
In ,
glee wrote:
"BillW50" wrote in message
...
In ,
snip
You know I have over a dozen XP machines here with almost all of
them
have been updated to SP3 years ago. But if I had to do it all over
again, I don't think I would.
As most already know, making any changes to an OS carries a risk of
causing stability problems. And since the day Vista was released,
Microsoft has not shown any evidence that they care about any
stability problems that any security patch causes with XP. As when
SP3 broke compacting with OE6, Microsoft just didn't care and never
bothered to fix it. That is only one example, but you get the idea.
SP3 didn't break compacting in OE. There is a Registry counter
that gives you a prompt to compact after 100 closings of OE. There
were a few programs that interacted with the counter after SP3 was
installed,
causing the counter to increase more quickly than just with OE
closings. I've not seen the issue on any systems I have worked on
since SP3 was released, others have. Apparently some Nero plug-ins
could increase the count but I never saw it and I have been using
Nero for years, the Mailwasher program interfered, and supposedly
installing Windows Live Mail also affected the counter. The counter
can be manually reset through a registry edit, and Tom Koch made a
tool that manually compacted on demand and also reset the counter at
the same time. None of these are necessary, if you don't use
Mailwasher or install WLM.
Oh boy! Yes SP3 did break compacting with OE6. As the newsgroups lit
up about this problem when SP3 was first released. And Bruce Hagen
often talked about it. I didn't see it at first, but I did finally
run into it (actually years after having SP3 installed). What I had
seen happen is it actually compacts just fine at first and the very
last thing it tries to update is folders.dbx. But it can't and an
error message states it is in use by another application. Here read
this:
http://www.outlookforums.com/threads...compact-files/
I don't actually follow Bruce's advice though. As all of the years
I've used OE, I almost never compact and I personally haven't ran
into a single problem not doing so. But I don't doubt for a second
that others can and do have problems. Oh yeah, my fix is to tell OE
to go offline and close OE down. Then reopen it and OE won't be doing
anything but just sit there. Now compact and don't do anything else
with OE until it is done. And that always worked for me so far.
And yes I know all about the counter and how it works and all. And I
might be wrong here, but I thought the counter thing was put in there
by SP2 and not SP3.
As far as security updates protecting you from infections, I too
believed this was true too. But over the years I started to have
doubts about this since I wasn't seeing any real evidence. I've
been running Windows since '93 and I never had an infection on any
of my computers yet. And on some of my computers I have stopped
security updates for years now and still I never had an infection.
There must be a reason for this?
Famous last words: I don't install security updates and I never had
an
infection. But others have, even with updates installed, because so
many infections are due to social engineering. If you are smarter
than the average bear and practice Safe Hex, you are unlikely to get
an infection. Most users need the security updates. By not
installing them, you leave yourself open to getting pwned due to a
security hole, and you and your AV will never know.
I understand all of this. And I base my opinion on testing on about 6
computers for over 5 years. And if not updating someday becomes fool
hardy, no problem. I have tons of backups to fix that problem really
quickly. But others should be doing this too if they want to stop
updating anyway.
And my beef about updates is that I am not troubled by malware, but
updates breaking something I am constantly fighting over. I have over
20 computers here and it doesn't take long before an update to screw
up at least one of them. So maybe you now know where I am coming
from.
Regarding OE compacting, we are talking about the same "issue"...
compacting was not "broken" however. Background compacting was the
problem, but compacting when closing OE or manually compacting while
offline worked fine.
I've never had a critical security update mess up a computer, unless
the computer was infected with a root kit or trojan. I'm not talking
about half a dozen computers, I'm talking about the neighborhood of
50 to 75. I never updated while running other programs, and always
disable the AV during update installation. Most of my clients did
not follow that procedure though, and they still never had update
problems. When people tell these tales of critical updates killing
their system, it has always been due to other issues in every case I
have seen. I'm curious.... when was the last time you checked you
system for root kits and trojans with Windows NOT loaded.... booting
from a Linux-based AV rescue CD?
I routinely repair other people infected systems all of the time, Glen.
I pull the drives out and scan them with a known clean system. And it
doesn't matter if you believe me or not. As all you have to do is to
scan Microsoft's KB list to know that updates can and does mess up an
OS.
List of fixes that are included in Windows XP Service Pack 3
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946480
Just look how many of these from the SP2 update had screwed up many
systems. There are dozens of new problems that were caused by SP2
directly. Sure SP3 fixed some of them, but SP3 also caused some of their
own new problems. Although there is not going to be a SP4 to fix all of
the new problems from SP3, now is there?
Don't let XP Service Pack 3 hose your system
http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/...e-your-system/
Windows XP SP3 Issues and Fixes Continued
http://techtalk.pcpitstop.com/2008/0...o-not-install/
Doing updates for decades, this is a very common theme. Even if you
change one line of code to a flawless system, the odds start dropping
that it will remain that way the more lines of code you change. That is
why more people have trouble with a SP than with a single small update.
It is just the law of averages. Although anybody who has lots of
experience knows all of this stuff anyway.
--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core2 Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP2