Doubtless like millions and millions of others, I blithely run Windows Update several times per month, whenever Microsoft makes updates available on every "patch Tuesday" (which, in Australia, should probably be called "patch Wednesday"). I've had occasional problems installing individual updates, a couple of which were quite unfathomable, but things always seemed to sort themselves out eventually.

Microsoft's technical knowledgebase is usually quite effective in helping to resolves issues, and if you can't find an answer there you can always go to a wide range of web sites and forums that cover Microsoft products.

More often than not, a "Google search" will be your saviour, when wisely selected search words can instantaneously lead you to a range of specialist articles or community forum posts with resolutions to your problem. (Thankfully long gone are the pre-Internet and pre-Google days, the 1980s through to the mid 1990s, roughly speaking. Back then, resolving technical issues was usually a slow and difficult process, with no simple way to extract information from vendors and when patches typically had to be mailed out to you on diskettes. It's painful to even think back to those bad old times.)

Anyhow, I just came across an article by Scot Dunn in in Windows Secrets -- who have the lovely motto: "Everything Microsoft forgot to mention" -- which will in future cause me to hesitate just that little bit before applying Windows updates.

"Stealth Windows update prevents XP repair" he writes. "A silent update that Microsoft deployed widely in July and August is preventing the "repair" feature of Windows XP from completing successfully. Ever since the Redmond company's recent download of new support files for Windows Update, users of XP's repair function have been unable to install the latest 80 patches from Microsoft."

Microsoft TechNet have a blog posting on this at Issues installing updates after repairing XP

After describing a process whereby you can manually register the relevant files to solve the patch failure problem, Scott goes on to say that this "crippling of Windows Update illustrates why many computer professionals demand to review updates for software conflicts before widely installing upgrades."

I couldn't agree more, but this isn't an option available to the average individual Windows user who is very much "in the lap of the gods" when it comes to technical matters like this.

It would be interesting if the software agreement (EULA) were to provide you with monetary or other compensation when a vendor's slip-up like this causes you to suffer unwanted stress, waste your time , lose  business opportunity, and the like. Strangely, I don't recall such an offer in the EULA for Windows XP, or in just about any other software agreement for that matter!

Phrases spring to mind like "The software is provided as-is and without warranty of any kind, express, implied or otherwise, including without limitation, any warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose."

Agreements like this are pretty much one-sided, almost to the point of being absurd, aren't they? I state this as the creator and vendor of a commercial software product (see NotesTracker here or here). Because of my dislike for such escape clauses, which to my mind almost verge on the unethical, I've tried to avoid them in the NotesTracker licence. If my product doesn't work as agreed, I'll make every reasonable effort to fix it as quickly as possible. Silly me!