A few weeks ago Microsoft forced the install of an unadvertised and undocumented update via Windows Update (WU).  Aside from installing software without the consent of user/owner, the update seriously breaks a Windows install after a Windows repair. I had another partially related issue with Internet Explorer.  IE 7 was installed prior to the repair; the reapir installed IE 6.   Post repair IE 6 was unstable and slower than usual.  I used a stand-alone IE 7 installer to fix this issue; the IE 7 install did not affect Windows Updates. I wasted three hours tracking down this issue (most of the time wasted waiting for WU to fail) and another hour installing the multitude of updates. For incorrect/incomplete information on this issue go here:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555615Correct information and a solution can be found in this ZDNet article:  http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=817&page=2If you get stuck with this problem, you have a few options: 

• 1. Manually re-register the DLLs as mentioned in the ZDNet article
• 2. Dump Windows and install Ubuntu (i.e. Linux for Windows users)
• 3. Apple offers this plug-and-play solution for all Windows problems.

This story was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 22:23 and is filed under Computing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.