Do I have too many patches?

[Leroy]

I've been obediently adding patches recommended in MS popups and now have
23; the latest is NTuninstallQ817606 that bears a date of 29.72003. But the
very latest - dated Oct 5, the same day I upgraded to IE6 - is XPsp1hfm.
I've read everything relevent on Knowledge Base to see if I should delete
everything before service pack 1, but they give so many options and sound so
many warnings of possible problems that I am afraid to touch anything. What
should I do?

And finally, why are my patches all prefixed NT if I have XP? I I always
indicated XP when possible.

LeRoy

 

[Thomas Wendell]

If the "patches" you're speaking are directories like
c:\windows\$NTuninstallQ817606$ and seen in blue under Explorer, that's not
the patches themselves, but the uninstall directories for these
patches/hotfixes.
XP is NT 5.1

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[purplehaz]

You should always get all patches and updates offered at windows update
website. You never have to many, no such thing.
You can manually delete the uninstall files under the windows folder(these
are hidden files so you need hidden files set to show to see them). Once you
delete them from explorer, you can go into control panel, add/remove
programs and remove the hotfix entries for the files you just deleted.*this
only deletes the uninstall program, not the patch itself).
XP = NT = XP
XP is the next version of nt, NT 5.1

 

[Gordon Burgess-Parker]

You should always get all patches and updates offered at windows
update website.

Rubbish! CRITICAL updates yes. Others - well you decide whether you need
them or not!

 

[purplehaz]

Rubbish! CRITICAL updates yes. Others - well you decide whether you need
them or not!

Most people don't know what to pick and choose at anyway, so it's just best
to let them get them all. If the system is kept clean of crap, junk,
spyware, virii, betas, demos, p2p file sharing programs, etc..then the ms
patches work fine. I NEVER and I repeat, NEVER, have any problems with any
ms patches, updates, fixes, or add-ons for xp or win2k. And I take care of
hundreds of computers. IMHO, for a newbie/novice or amatuer it is smarter to
just get them all, rather then get none at all cause you don't know what
they are. If people would have blindly installed the patch for the RPC
exploit then the blaster worm would have died quickly. But many, many did as
you suggest and picked what they thought was important. Since they didn't
know what the patch was they skipped it and eventually got the blaster worm
costing them a loss of revenue. It may have even been listed as critical(I
don't remember) and some customers still skipped it cause they had no idea
what it was. I say, keep your system running as best as you can with
preventative maintenance and install all patches, updates available.(the
only one most people do not need right now is the .net framework)