To patch or not to patch, that is....

My question.

I've been an M$ specialist for 7 years now, and seen and done a lot of weird stuff to make M$ products work well in different environments.

Regardless of that, when I install my "precious" windows xp pro here at home, isolated from any corporate political issues and well guarded against hackers and virii, I always wind up asking myself "why should I patch my home computer?"

A lot of you will unquestionably nod when I say SP2 puts a stick in the speed spokes on xp, and countless other patches are also know to drastically affect XP OS.

What do YOU think? and even more important, what do you do? Personally, privately, not in a business nor professionally, thats a different story.. but at home, your computer?

Next time around this SP1a OEM system wont get a patch thats for sure.. most of them I dont even need, let alone care for.

Cheers, Flix

I always make sure gentoo is up to date and that I have the latest XP patches. It doesnt take much time and it could save me a LOT of time.

I personally couldnt care for them whatsoever. Usually If and when I load XP it's a very stripped down copy. More often then not I've had problems with their patches and even more if I try and remove them. For me they often break things, weather I install them later or slipstream with the original install.

I have this problem with linux sometimes but no where near as often and if something doesnt work I can almost always remove it without it doing more harm.

Unpatched home pc's. w/no firewall sw/hw, out of date virus defs, un-educated (click happy users) and lack of best practices, in that order, IMO = the major problem on the Internet with the spread of virii.

jajmon said:

Unpatched home pc's. w/no firewall sw/hw, out of date virus defs, un-educated (click happy users) and lack of best practices, in that order, IMO = the major problem on the Internet with the spread of virii.

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While true, not the question here, as anti-virus and hardware firewall is present.

Cheers, Flix

It depends on a lot of things: does your home system have intnernet access (dialup or broadband?), what browser do you use, what email program, which other network accessing software?

I have a full patched XP and a stripped down XPlite copy with almost no software, no AV, no firewall for offline gaming.

I have XP Pro on all my pc's (legally, multiple PC licence).

It's the CD with SP1 on it, so when i installed it, it's pretty much done for me. I turn off automatic updates and only when there's some terribly important update i download it.

I don't use a firewall, don't use antivirus, and i have never had any problem with it that i couldn't fix in 5min.

For most people, there is no real, compelling reason to not patch your OS. There are the few instances where you need to use a program that does not run right under SP2, but chances are if you are running in to that situation, what you are using is outdated, and unless it's a game, there is probably a newer version available that works properly under SP2.

Still, that is definitely the exception. IMO everybody should be patching their OS. It's a completely painless procedure; you can simply set it up so it downloads patches automatically, and let it install them when you shutdown or overnight when you are not using it. For most people, there's really no good excuse to not install OS patches.

I've always installed the patches and haven't seen any adverse effects from doing so. IMO it's more important to have the latest security and bug fixes than to have Internet Explorer open maybe 13 milliseconds faster. I've definitely never seen anything slow down or had any problems running programs to the point where I would want to leave myself unnecessarily vulnerable. I was actually really pleased with XP SP2, it installed a bunch of useful stuff, and the updates to IE were especially helpful. The integrated firewall was nice too.

ju5tin99 said:

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Well, a PC booting slow due to some #&%# antivirus program running has always been my pet PEEV. I'm on broadband for four years already, and all i do is run the free panda online scan every month or so. Never had troubles.

Sjaak said:

Well, a PC booting slow due to some #&%# antivirus program running has always been my pet PEEV. I'm on broadband for four years already, and all i do is run the free panda online scan every month or so. Never had troubles.

Click to expand...

I wasn't talking about antivirus software. I hate that stuff too. Every time I go to my parent's house and use their computer I want to shoot myself because they have so many programs that boot up automatically and bog the system down. I don't even have an antivirus program, and my firewall is turned off 99% of the time and I've never had a problem.

I'm just talking about the security patches and bug fixes that come along with the service packs and automatic updates. They mainly just fix glitches in the software code that either have been, or could be exploited to cause a lot of trouble. Any performance loss from these updates is worth any miniscule slowdown that may occur IMO.

Isn't the sophos AV engine meant to avoid that slowdown through some clever technique (can't for the life of me remember what, somebody xplained it to me a while ago)