Is there some serious problem with the recent critical updates from Microsoft?

In the last few days Microsoft released a lot of critical updates (~14 or so), which have automatically been applied to all our PCs at home.  I’ve got a Vista Ultimate desktop on a machine which I configured and built from Tiger Direct.  My son and daughter both have some HP laptops, that they purchased this year, running Vista Home Premium, and I have an older Dell laptop with Vista Ultimate.

 

All 4 of these machines are experiencing major problems. I cannot believe that this is coincidence.  I strongly suspect that it is a result of at least one of these critical updates.

 

My desktop experienced a BSOD last night while I was working on an ASP.NET application.  Lost everything.

 

My daughter’s laptop won’t come up at all.

 

My son’s laptop suddenly had massive display problems, went all “streaky” (you’d have to be here to see it) and the mouse froze.

 

As far as changes go, I had to purchase a new monitor yesterday for my desktop, as the only one died.  No other changes.

 

For my son and daughter, they haven’t made any changes at all to their laptops.  No new drivers, no new software, nothing.

 

The only similarity is that we’ve all had all of those critical updates from Microsoft applied automatically.

 

So, does anyone know one way or another if there is some issue with one or more of these updates? And if so, what in heck do we do about it???

Hi Doctor Who(!)

Not that this helps you much but I have 5 machines here at home - mixture or laptops, desktops and the media center pc hooked to my TV that have all been updated with all the latest vista patches, and I haven't experienced any noticable problems.
I know that doesn't help, other than to say 5 machines and no problems.

I'm wondering if you've just had a huge case of unbelievable coincidence and bad luck? Is there a common program or service on all these machines that could be getting in the way?

No problem here.

I don't have the lock up problems you describe but I am suddenly having problems with emails. Any emails I send from either Outlook or Windows Mail, people who receive emails from me are shown the MIMI contents of the email, not the rendered version.

I have looked at the raw file that is created in the Outbox folder and  it seems that a 'boundary' section is missing from the email. I gather
that when the receiving client receives this faulty structured email  it doesn't know what to do with it so just displayes the whole lot.

As I said, never had an issue until yesterday so can't help wondering if something has been changed in the last round of Microsoft updates which happened on 12-12-2008?

I'm waiting til tomorrow to see if my works PC is suffering with the same problem.

ZippyV said:

No problem here.

Hmmm.   OK, I'll just keep and eye on it.

Doctor Who said:

ZippyV said:

*snip*

Hmmm.   OK, I'll just keep and eye on it.

Is there any unusual piece of software that all the systems have in common?

I remember installing Windows 2000 SP3 on the computers at a school where I sometimes help with the IT, and getting BSODs on every single machine, even though I had installed it without trouble at home. After an afternoon of hair pulling, it turned out the culprit was a virtual CD application that the school used (so it was on every machine) that wasn't compatible with SP3.

err Doctor. Just one of my two Vista machines got hit by a very similar sounding issue immediatly after running Windows Update for Dec.

Simo said:

err Doctor. Just one of my two Vista machines got hit by a very similar sounding issue immediatly after running Windows Update for Dec.

As the only local data on the machine was my music I ran the thing in Safe mode (+network support), robocopied all the MP3s off the thing and wiped the machine. WU ran fine on the fresh build, that and the fact that I haven't heard many people complaining about this issue means I guess the problem is obscure and will be hard to repro. Very nasty though, really very nasty.

I heard Microsoft provides free support if there is a problem with updating Windows. Is this true and did anyone ever try it?

ZippyV said:

Simo said:

*snip*

I heard Microsoft provides free support if there is a problem with updating Windows. Is this true and did anyone ever try it?

Yep it is true. I've not tried it personally, but I know someone who did when Vista SP1 came out. They walked him through the process of rolling his install back to something that worked, advised him to turn off Auto-update temporarily and then got back to him once they had a solution.

I have used PSS in the past for none WU related issues and must say that they do provide a very good service in my experience.

AndyC said:

ZippyV said:

*snip*

Yep it is true. I've not tried it personally, but I know someone who did when Vista SP1 came out. They walked him through the process of rolling his install back to something that worked, advised him to turn off Auto-update temporarily and then got back to him once they had a solution.

I have used PSS in the past for none WU related issues and must say that they do provide a very good service in my experience.

Hi there.

I just discovered this forum, so I apologize if this Not the Way We Do Things Here, but I thought it might be interesting if those of  you who are having issues with the updates could provide minidmps or memory.dmps for us to compare.  Sometimes they can have useful info and we can see if you have anything in common.