I get the paid version of Windows Secrets and I would guess you are talking about the article on Windows Genuine Advantage? They should be called on the carpet for making us continue to go through that over and over it is ridiculous, make us do it once and be done with it. I did not see any mention of this last patch Tuesdays updates causing any problems, they do mention the patches for IE and their importance. I have only seen on a few forums some very minor issues but none like this 98 thing. I have run this windows 98 issue by a few MS MVP's and no one has seen or hear of it happening and all want to know the outcome so please arkie62 keep us posted on what you do and your outcomes please. For those who want to view the latest windows secrets here is the link, this however will not contain the paid content, it is an excellent newsletter and well worth subscribing to whether the pay or free version. Here is a link that might be useful: windows secrets newsletter

I don't see a problem with that up-date (KB890830) just installed it and a few others for Windows 7. All is well.

when you go to windows update site and choose custom it will then tell you which are critical and which are not and it will show sp3 as a separate update, you can select only the critical ones you need to install and also uncheck ones like sp3 that you do not want to install at that time. If it shows as a critical update then you probably want to install it.

I know when I was shopping for a computer in Jan. the best prices and biggest hard drives were for 64 bit. It seemed you got more for your money going 64-bit. After checking, I found out that the software I use for work would not work with 64 bit systems. I needed my computers to work well together and didn't want to chance mixing 32 bit with 64. I later learned from a couple of people who bought 64 and couldn't get some of their software to work and continued using their old computers for certain things. At first it was blamed on Vista, but later determined it had to do with 64 bit. My guess is that people who are good with computers can work through these problems and get their machines to run smoothly, but for the average computer person, it is too difficult. I guess it is the wave of the future, but I don't think the software people are spending a lot of time on it. Also, there are some hardware issues with printers and scanners. You need to check carefully before updating. Personally, I don't want computers which give me a hassle. I bought two new machines last year with XP. I want machines to 'just work.' Jane