On: 12 Oct 03  18:45:00 Bill Birrell wrote to Charles Angelich:

 >     I've already had evidence of that this morning. Windows update put a 
 > modem update out for me to download - presumably because of the external 
 > modem on Com1: Did that, and then the system went haywire. Kept rebooting 
 > and dying in quick succession. Took me a couple of minutes to remember that 
 > there was a "safe mode", and to use that. Did that and
restored to the point 
 > immediately before the update. Now it's back to normal and it can live without 
 > that particular modem update. Reported it manually to Microsoft, and
after that 
 > the system itself did an error report, reporting an unsafe driver.
 
 That is good that you were able to use Restore to solve that problem. 
Personally, I am not a fan of that type of utility.  I prefer to keep track
of the changes I make and undo them manually.  For example, if the
situation you describe had happend to me I would have pressed F8 when the
system rebooted and then used "Last Known Good Configuration" to
restore the previous regestry settings.  If I had already successfully
logged in before I had a chance to use LKGC (when you login the Last Known
Good Configuration is replaced with the most recent configuration, good or
bad) I would have used the Recovery Console to manually replace the driver
file.  

(Everyone should have recovery console installed.  To do so, insert your
installation media, open a command prompt, and type "\i386\winnt32.exe
/cmdcons"  then follow the instructions to complete the installation.)

Driver updates should never be taken lightly.  Never install a driver as
part of a batch update.  Instead install each new driver one at a time so
that you can observe how the machine responds and take corrective actions
if necessary.

As I say, I am not a fan of System Restore.   It just seems to me like it
was designed for technophobic users who don't want to get their hands dirty
under the hood.  The whole idea of having huge volumes of disk space
occupied by nothing but copies of recent system state rubs me the wrong
way.  It's just to... to... to, damn Windowsie!

I have also heard and read on several occasions that XP Restore does not
always work well.  In fact, just last week on TechTV they were recommending
that people to turn it off because it is so unreliable.

If it works for you, that's great...  I wish you luck with future restores.  :-)

 Windows Update, OTOH, is very handy if you have a large number of
workstations to update.  I have used it to install Critical Patches and
Windows Updates for years and never had a problem... I am always careful
about doing driver updates with it.  The only people I know of who have
ever had a problem with it are the ones who use it to install driver
updates carelessly.

 >     I now have C, C++, Basic, Fortran, Pascal, COBOL and Java loaded, and I've 
 > tried them out just to check that they work. I'll think about an
assembler later.
 
Gosh, Bill!  You're going to be one programming fool!  :-)

Take Care!
-Roger

--- Spinone v0.1.79 Win32