Revisiting my balky PC!

[Boomyal]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

Using IE 8, clicking on the Safety tab will show Windows Update in the drop down. Clicking that will open the Microsoft Update page. On the left pane, click on Review Your Update History.

Found the history and here are the results, all Nov, 24th:

KB 2888505-installed
KB 2868626-failed
KB 2760415-failed
KB 2862152-failed
KB 2876331-failed
KB 2888505-failed
KB 890830 -failed

 

[GA_Boater]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

Are the failed updates installed at a later time? I see KB 2888505 listed as both failed and installed.

What you could do to verify all updates are installed is go through the Windows Update and click Express. It will check, download any missing updates and tell when they are ready to install. If it says No High Priority Updates are available, then updates aren't the problem. Still, it won't hurt to check.

 

[fishrdan]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

Bring up the task manager, Processes tab, click on the CPU column to get the highest usage processes at the top. What's taking all the processor, System Idle Process or,,, something else? (svchost.exe?)

?... :bump2: layball: eep:

 

[alldodge]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

Found the history and here are the results, all Nov, 24th:

KB 2888505-installed
KB 2868626-failed
KB 2760415-failed
KB 2862152-failed
KB 2876331-failed
KB 2888505-failed
KB 890830 -failed

Are the failed updates installed at a later time? I see KB 2888505 listed as both failed and installed.

What you could do to verify all updates are installed is go through the Windows Update and click Express. It will check, download any missing updates and tell when they are ready to install. If it says No High Priority Updates are available, then updates aren't the problem. Still, it won't hurt to check.

MS isn't great but it at least knows enough to not install something it shouldn't and not reinstall something that has already been installed, hence the KB2888505 showing installed and failed. Looks like you get KB2898785 installed you should be good. So if auto update doesn't do it, click the link in my previous post and download it.

 

[colbyt]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

MS isn't great but it at least knows enough to not install something it shouldn't and not reinstall something that has already been installed,

Very true but sometimes updates have to be installed in order and rarely a single update has to take place before a series of them can be installed properly. The rollback may have deleted a critical component.

 

[dolluper]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

I would say you have to update everything.windows update ,adobe reader,flash,anti virius,java.....whatever you have

 

[dolluper]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

Well Boom you finish all your updating of absolutatly everything and its chunging along again.....btw I have a P4 with one Gig ram running almost the same as a newer dual core 4 gig ram running windows 7 you know xp SP5 when you forget VISTA.....btw my vita onlt has 1 gig of ram and is a little slowerb than the Widows 7

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

Well Boom you finish all your updating of absolutatly everything and its chunging along again.....btw I have a P4 with one Gig ram running almost the same as a newer dual core 4 gig ram running windows 7 you know xp SP5 when you forget VISTA.....btw my vita onlt has 1 gig of ram and is a little slowerb than the Widows 7

I am still coasting along, letting the culprit computer well warm up before I try to use it. I have been a little bit busy and have not allocated the time to follow some of the recommendations in this post. In the short term, I want to keep this thing working so I can access and use my DOS based business program.

I can easily enough transfer the program to another computer but then I would have an issue with printer setups. My program uses both a 66 line laser printer and an old Panasonic Pin Printer for printing mailing labels. I can switch the laser between computers but my pin printer is only hooked up to one computer, with no A/B switch.

But, I will get to it! Thanks all for standing by and jumping in.

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

Problem with spending a lot of effort here is that in April, Microsoft will end support for XP so that if you ever hook this computer to the Ethernet again, you are super vulnerable. Time to bit the bullet and move to a newer OS.

 

[MTboatguy]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

One thing you will learn about hackers, when the support ends, so do the attacks, there is no more challenge and hackers relish the challenge.

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

One thing you will learn about hackers, when the support ends, so do the attacks, there is no more challenge and hackers relish the challenge.

Except for the people that want your personal data...they don't care about the challenge.

 

[MTboatguy]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

Bruce it is funny, I have monitoring software on all of my computers and my windows 8 machine averages thousands of attacks a day, my XP machines average less than 10, it is amazing how those attacks have fallen off since MS announced they were discontinuing support for XP. I love XP, it is probably the best OS Microsoft ever came out with and I will keep running it on my most important machines.

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

If I had a third computer kicking around, I would do a fresh download of XP, get all the possible updates ( MS must have cumulative updates bundled up so you don't need to do a huge string of all the individual ones), then clone it.

 

[GA_Boater]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

If I had a third computer kicking around, I would do a fresh download of XP, get all the possible updates ( MS must have cumulative updates bundled up so you don't need to do a huge string of all the individual ones), then clone it.

The only big cumulative bundles are Service Packs - SP1, SP2 and SP3. I have an XP SP2 update disk and I have reloaded to a clean formatted hard drive. There are literally hundreds of incremental updates to install after SP3 is loaded. It took a couple of days to get to the current release level and that was a couple of years ago, so it would be even longer now.

EDIT - I went back and checked my update history. It did take two days after starting the fresh install of XP SP2 to get current. About 120 updates until SP3 was installed and about 80 updates after before the fresh install was finished. Since then, 02/2012, there have been around 3200 total updates. It will take some time if you go with a fresh install.

 

[alldodge]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

My old XP computer is still running like it use to since I installed those two fixes.

 

[dolluper]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

Try Auto patcherXp full may 2007.....plus the update for it august which is just below it on the download list.....speeds up the windows update downloads.......Can be had here under ALL in One downloads free and safe I use it...link only works on legal copies click on download locations to get itDownload AutoPatcher XP Full - MajorGeeks

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

Try Auto patcherXp full may 2007.....plus the update for it august which is just below it on the download list.....speeds up the windows update downloads.......Can be had here under ALL in One downloads free and safe I use it...link only works on legal copies click on download locations to get itDownload AutoPatcher XP Full - MajorGeeks

At what point after a reload would you run that AutoPatcher? I also like to decrapify my OS. Should I do AutoPatcher first?

 

[dolluper]

Re: Revisiting my balky PC!

Run it when you have anti viruis and java installed and updated right after the reload......run it and get all the windows updates real fast works great.....by the way it's from microsoft