Random musings....
You can find out what a given patch affects by looking up the KB reference
at
http://support.microsoft.com. The problem can be interpreting the
reference and determining exactly what the impact may be to your system.
Security patches are technically in a gray area. They patch known issues
that a bad guy can exploit, but some good guy may have gotten lazy and
decided to do something non-standard that is directly linked to the exploit.
Yes, the only way to destabilize an otherwise stable software platform is to
change it but by the same token if you don't take care of newly discovered
exploits, some one will change the software platform for you without your
permission and you'll not like the results at all. Since you're seeing
acknowledged issues with your financial app and MS security patches I'd
start hammering the folks that wrote the financial package. It's rare that a
well behaved app will be affected by a security patch, but it's been known
to occur.
If you really and truly think your issue is patch related, you can do a
reinstall which will render your system vulnerable to all the bad guys out
there that will gladly exploit you, or you can beat the folks that wrote
your financial package over the head for doing less than wise things. It's
your call.
BTW: Yes, some of the MS patches (2? that I can think of) have in fact
broken functional systems, but not in the manner you state. You're dealing
with an application issue, not an OS/OS patch issue.
--
Walter Clayton - MS MVP(WinXP)
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
http://www.dts-l.org
George Richardson said:
I have a 3 year old HP OfficeJet T45 which worked flawlessly with WIN
98SE. I changed to Win XP Pro and am
having issues with some of the line drawing on forms in my accounting
program. Printer Drivers are latest. Accounting
software patches are latest. Accounting newsgroup indicates conflict with
some Microsoft security patches. Is there any
way to tell if a patch addresses a printing issue. I have always worked on
the if it ain't broke don't fix it theory so I rarely
