I remember you posting about that Windows update a while back. Two of my mates had similar issues..............well it screwed up big time and they had to reinstall. They both had autoupdates enabled and were running other stuff at the time, so I suppose it was some sort of application conflict?

I never let auto updates run, just do the download and put the little icon in the system tray. I manually launch it when nothing else is running.

I guess I have seen autoupdates screw up at least a dozen times, and heard about a lot more. There isn't anything you can do except a full reinstall in my experience.

A more common and insidious variation is when it seems to have updated OK and MS tell you that you have no outstanding updates, but they have not all installed properly

That can produce all sorts of instability and weird crashes. I use Belarc Advisor, as it scans your MS updates and flags ones that are corrupt. Then you just uninstall the hotfix and manually update.

I have never bothered to call MS support because I know there are so many possible combinations they won't have any fix other than to start over.

As for writing down the sysadmin password.............. you should do this and store it in a sealed envelope in the CEO or CFO's safe. Some day someone might put the wires on and let the hammer down on the SysAdmin?

Or he might just get run over by a short bus?