Thank Goodness! I AM Sane

Yesterday my computer had a couple of burps. Internet Explorer shut
down and Windows Explorer locked up once, but the computer recovered.
There were no problems with World or Excel. Today when I checked the
Windows Update discussion I found a reference to a new Microsoft
support article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base that was released
yesterday: Problems in Windows Explorer or the Windows shell after you install security update MS06-015(908531

This article describes the exact problems that I encountered after
installing the critical Windows updates on Tuesday. What still bothers
me is that the solution involves editing the Windows registry. It
involves entering a long complicated string of numbers and letters.
This is not a task that that most computer users can safely
accomplish. I am not going to attempt to edit the registry on my
computer. Since my computer is not experiencing the severe problems
now I am assuming the registry was changed when the computer recovered
from the hard crash.

I am sure that Microsoft will issue a patch for the patch at some
future point in time. They delayed releasing this last batch of
critical updates because they claimed they were doing compatibility
testing. I have lost faith in them because so many people use Hewlett
Packard peripherals (printers, scanners and cameras) and have the HP
software installed on their Windows machines. Their compatibility
testing should have caught this problem before they released the
updates.

I do not think Microsoft has heard the end of this one. It has not
been reported in the press yet, but I would not be surprised if this
one grows into a major class action lawsuit.