Oh, Microsoft, why is our relationship so strained? After I praise your XP SP2 update, yesterday you let me down with a muffed security fix. Optimistically, I had turned on the “automatic updates” feature, and noted that some large files were being downloaded via our slow dial-up connection.
When I tried to shut down my computer, I was met with an “updates will be installed upon shutdown” notice that I had never seen before. Still optimistic, I went ahead and clicked “shut down,” after which I gazed upon an endlessly recurring loop of installation messages, as described by my fellow Windows sufferer IanG who posted this plaintive query in a Microsoft Windows update discussion group:
I downloaded SP2 last week, upon shutting down my computer last night the shutdown screen started displaying "Installing update 1 of 3" and alternating this text with "Do not turn off or unplug your computer" - I haven't and it's still doing this 15 hours later! Any ideas?
This posting came from page 2 of 368 pages of queries concerning XP2 and security update problems. Earth to Microsoft: If you can’t reliably write software for installing your updates, what makes you think users are going to be confident installing the updates themselves?
In today’s Bend Bulletin, in an AP story called “Microsoft releases security updates,” I read: Stephen Toulouse, a security program manager at Microsoft, said people who had Service Pack 2 and are also using Office XP didn’t correctly receive the update because of a problem with the installer.
Yes, Stephen, I know. I have SP2 and Office XP. Doesn’t Microsoft? Wouldn’t you have checked the security update installation on a computer with SP2 and Office XP before you released it? Good god…
Notwithstanding my personal success with installing SP2, you might want to read this PC World article before taking the plunge yourself. It says that 9% of those who installed XP2 had moderate problems, and 4% encountered difficulties that made their computer difficult or impossible to use.
Not good enough, Microsoft. Keep trying. I’ve turned off “automatic updates,” which got my own computer back to working after I exited the endless loop of installation messages. From now on I’ll decide when to install a security update, not you, Microsoft.
Power to the user, not Microsoft! (in my dreams…)
Geez! Get a Mac for god's sake.
Posted by: R Smith | October 14, 2004 at 11:21 AM