My October 2010 comments on "Firefox & Software Update Madness" didn't address Microsoft and the need to continuously update their software.
Microsoft created Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Windows 7 (Win7), the latest version of their operating system back in April or so. I happen to own three computers running Win7. My wife has a new laptop running Win7 64-bit Home Premium. I have an old home built computer running 32-bit Win7 Home Premium. I also have a computer running Win7 64-bit Ultimate, which I consider my primary computer.
When SP1 came out I was hesitant to install it based on past experience. I had learned the hard way that you should always let others do the initial late-beta testing that seems to be necessary after Microsoft initially releases a service pack. I chose to try installing SP1 on my 32-bit Win7 computer along with the other monthly updates. I started getting Blue Screens of Death (BSOD) randomly Eventually, I managed to track down the problems with help from Microsoft's update support and the computer started running normally after resorting to a cloned disk backup. To play on Dirty Harry, I felt lucky and installed it without problems on my wife's new laptop. Then I decided it should be safe and tried installing on my 64-bit Ultimate computer. I regretted the decision for the next four weeks.
The install went poorly and hung at 16% after rebooting. Tom's Hardware web site gave a suggestion to go ahead and turn the computer off and then turn it back on to go ahead and finish the install. The suggestion worked and the install completed. I began to suffer BSOD's both while running and even more scary during the boot sequence. I would be presented with a recovery screen after the boot failure which invariably said it failed. That's when I first contacted Microsoft for the new problems. The problems continued and I contacted MS support again the next weekend. The problems continued after this second contact with MS support so I called them yet again. After this I noticed things were still not right. The AMD Vision Control Center crashed immediately. Media Center crashed immediately, yet Media Player worked fine. I got a notice about IE8 shutting down unexpectedly, even though I'm running IE9. It mentioned an event number and I thought I would look at the event.
When I tried bringing up the Event Viewer it said that the Event Viewer snap-in could not be displayed and that it may not have been installed correctly. OMG, this is part of the operating system and I decided to call MS support once again. After explaining the new problems, the MS support idiot asked me whether I could boot without crashing. I said yes, and this idiot sent me back to another MS drone to get a new ticket number for this latest problem caused by MS SP1. That's when they told me they were going to charge me to fix this "new problem". I went ballistic and the MS drone eventually hung up on me. My only indication they were not there was a dial tone.
I decided to hell with Microsoft and their incompetence. I called a local computer repair guy to come to the house and figure out what's wrong. The repair guy came by the house and looked at the 64-bit system and decided to uninstall Win7 SP1 manually since according to Windows Update it had not installed completely. Once he did that he installed it again. All the symptoms are now gone. Best $100 I've spent in a while.
LESSON LEARNED: Most MS Support people are nice (not that last set of idiots) but they blindly follow a script which might only hide the true problem. The first three calls were to foreign support people. The first was in the Philippines and the second as well as the third were from India. The foreign support people were respectful, patient and easy to work with, even if they couldn't solve the problem. Only the American MS support people, if I remember right in Oregon, appeared more interested in ending the call than helping a customer with a problem caused by a update to their software. Nasty, nasty people.
