Yeah, I really rather not update my Windows system. Yesterday I decided to update my Windows XP Pro with SP2, which did not really go over too well. First I skipped the installation of SP2 and installed the patches released on the 12th. After I installed them my computer began to restart about 5 to 8 minutes after the completion of the boot up cycle. At first I thought it might have just needed couple of restarts to get the new changes to line up, but I was mistaken. It was doing that all the time! My computer must have restarted about thirty times before I really have had it and was convinced that there is not fix, following my attempt in a fast and extensive search, between restarts, of the NET for anyone with similar problems after installing the latest patches.
As a result of the above I had to uninstall all the patches I had just finished installing. Doing so fixed the constant rebooting problem, but it did not come at a cheap price. One would thing that there should not be any problems with uninstalling the patches, but one is greatly involved in wishful thinking. I uninstalled the miserable patches only to find a lot of my programs reset, and on top of that my, more than 5000, bookmarks were gone!? Now that would really had pissed me off, and it did at first, until I remembered that the lovely Firefox comes with extensions. One of witch, Bookmarks Synchronizer, allows for backing up your bookmarks to a remote location. Let me hear “woot, woot”! Why? Because I had backed up my bookmarks just few days ago, and I did not had more than a dozen changes to them since. So I reconfigured things, downloaded my bookmarks and I was back in business.
That was until I decided to give it a second try today. Whoa! This time it took me only two tries. Today I decided to install SP2 and then all the patches all at once, which once again it did not ended up in 100 percent working condition. This time with every attempt to start Internet Explorer, there was a crash. So again, I uninstalled everything I had just installed, and I started again from the beginning. This time I followed one of my old advices, install MS patches one by one. After I did that, no problems anymore. Of course I did skip installing one of the awfully patches from yesterday. Still, everything is working now, knock on wood!
Lesson learned: do not forget, always install MS patches one by one!