REQUIRED Windows Patches?

[mrleachy]

4 words to add to this discussion...

XP service pack 1...

i would certainly rather MS didn't automatically update my box, after SP1 froze midway my machine couldnt boot and i had to do a recovery from my install cd, so long as i have my linux firewall and anti virus up to date im happy, security patches or not

[omalakai]

Win2K SP3 added the new Automatic Updates process that ships with XP.
With this version, you can currently set it to "Automatically download the updates, and install them on the schedule that I specify", then you select which day of the week (or Every Day) and a time for this to happen.
Sure, it is not enabled by default, and maybe that is what is being thought for Longhorn. But I'm sure as heck not going to run it that way!
I am not the best fan of the whole Automatic Updates process anyway. I prefer to schedule patch maintenance times, then I download and install patches that have been out for a while. I NEVER run a patch that just came out. I have seen several patches that were recalled due to problems.
To let a system automatically download and install its own patches in the middle of the night will just lead to phone calls in the middle of the night when the server does not come back up!

[_1l31l2uTiCu$_]

Never heard anything so ridiculous. Microsoft never fails to piss people off. Everyone wonders why Microsoft is a target... self-inflicting moves like this makes it pretty obvious

[darkes]

With respect, I think a lot of people are missing a few issueshere.
I would always expect MS to give anyone who knows what they are doing an option to disable this - if not then, yes, MS has got it wrong.

But on a PC sold in a high street store (especially 3-5 years ago) ??
A lot of this depends on how old you are - let's take an arbitrary age of say, 35 years old.
If you are over 35 (or whatever), then you expect your PC to work like any other household appliance. We all know that this isn't the case at the moment.

I'm speaking from personal experience here, as I have fixed several PCs over the last year for friends & family (I happen to be in the 35+ age range, but have worked in the IT industry since university). One quote that I thought summed everything up was:

"I expected this to work like my lawnmower - why doesn't it do what is says on the box?"

To which I replied that this was a bad analogy, and in fact your PC was more like a dodgy second hand car, which needed a mechanic to fix it (it was infected with bugbear at the time). As I've done that, why don't you let me give you some driving lessons

[MrLinus]

Darkes,

Fair enough but how many lawnmowers do you know that go back to John Deer and get themselves repaired? The reality is that if you want your mower repaired (and sometimes they do need repair -- new blades, engine tune-ups etc.) you take it in.

Computer "heal thyself" is not a reality -- at least not yet. And I don't think it will or should be one for a while. One of the problems is the reality of poor software. I think MS is opening itself up to more problems than solutions. The idea is good in the sense of helping users keep up-to-date. However, it assumes that everything will go smoothly. I remember the SP6 update for NT. A friend was a Lotus Notes admin and had decided to wait. She was one of the few smart ones. Many lost their Notes installs due to this patch, which had never been tested by MS in that kind of environment. MS cannot test patches for every conceivable setup.

I think perhaps better notifications (more details as to why they need the latest updates rather than just "There is a new update. Click here"). RH's update actually will tell you what the updates are for, what thingy they fix and why it needs to be fixed. Educate the user. That is far more powerful than any update mechanism is by itself.

IMHO.

[darkes]

Again, I don't agree with MsMittens.

I would never dream of applying any MS patches to a live system that I support on a professional basis. On the other hand, how much damage has been done to home users by automatically applying critical updates? Worst case scenario afaik - it slows your PC down.

Home users running a networked version of Lotus notes - not very likely !!

MS issuing warnings about what the update does is going to be completely meaningless to a large number of people, who do at the moment reject the MS updates. I know someone who rejected the MS update to fix the LovSan hole (RPC/port 135 loophole), because they thought it must be a virus that was issuing the message .... and yes, they are infected

I try my best to educate the end users that I deal with, but some have no interest at all, so I end up wasting my time.

[thehorse13]

Funny. This new direction contradicts two MS products SMS and SUS. Are they going to strip capabilities out of these tools? WTF is Billy up to now? I know that if I shelled out 300K for SMS and then found out that patch management fell to the wayside, I'd be *quite* pissed.

[SDK]

I have to agree with darkes. Most of Worms and Virus are keep alive by home user who does not keep their anti-virus and windows up to date. Before MsBlater worm, I always disable windows update features in machine I was installing for friends and neigh Bourg but I really start to think I should turn in on even if I have to reboot their machine while their are working. Maybe Microsoft could have a brain and put option to install update only when the user shutdown down is computer. This way, it's would be almost invisible to the user. With ATX computer, the time is take for a computer to shut down is not important since it request no user input. Forcing a update to be install before shut down don't slow down the user in is work and he's won't bug him for a reboot in the middle of a working session.

For corporate user, automatic update shouldn’t be use. Windows 2003 servers have nice features to push update to computer. But for home user, automatic update must get better.

[MrLinus]

Originally posted here by darkes

Home users running a networked version of Lotus notes - not very likely !!

If I suggested they would, I apologize. It wasn't my intent to suggest that but rather use it as an analogy as to the problem with autoupdating without question. Personally, I think that users will not know what to do as they will not know what has happened.

An autoupdate of AV is usually a simple update of the virus dat file.

An autoupdate of an OS could change anything. Problems that occur may leave users unawares as they will not know what has been updated/changed.

As for users not wanting to know, they are always like that. People are making assumptions based on what they are told. And that lies, IMHO, with MS and their idea that an OS should be "problem free" and shouldn't require greats amounts of learning to use. MS propogates that anyone can use their OS without any manuals or understanding of computers. And they do this not for the betterment of society but to sell more. The less you investigate and ask questions, the more they can sell.

Will this change? Probably not.

Will autoupdate without question fix this? No. I don't think this is the solution for long-term issues. (Case in point: the recent sobig.f variant is running more rampant than ever before even with autoupdate AV -- on those machines that have it).

Is there a solution to this? I don't know.

Will darkes and I ever agree? No. So the closest we can get is to agree to disagree.

[MicroBill]

In My less than perfect world Users dont care about updates and dont want to know what they are all about and i have to live with the fact that if an update isent done in under 5 mins some bastard is gona complain about it. And i think that setts a standard fore the average home user...if its not done in 5 min. its not worth doing before some one is throwing a virus at them...ore pointing a gun.. Some ppl just dont se the point before its to late.