New Windows Critical Update 14-4-04
 

I've just downloaded the new XP security fix. It took ages, as the world and his wife are presumably doing the same.

It's another fix for a security vulnerability.

Yes - so have I. It didn't take very long - but there were 6 individual patches in the download. There is also an Office XP update (649 kb) available - that did take ages, even on Broadband!

I downloaded the critical updates for Win2k last night, and they took a while - unusual, but I suppose given they were new updates, not surprising.

And the Office update, while only 649kb, may have been a lead-in to another, much larger, download - Service Packs and IE upgrades sometimes do that.

I've just done the same and I did notice that the MSN site was extremely slow. Also where the MSN flag should have been there was the red X instead. Did make me wonder if I was on a spoof page.
Has anybody had any problems with ".net messenger" being unavailable ? A friend of mine has not been able to use MSN messenger and the reason given was ".net.messenger is temporarily unavailable".........it's been like that for a week. When I turned my computer on this morning I had the same message, however after downloading the updates (5 in total) everything was back to normal. Wondered if there was a connection as I know he does not have the updates installed.
Regards
FBW

It's ground to a halt now and is saying ''no updates are available at this time. Please try again later.''

mcdhu

I guess that's because the updates are classed as "Critical", because they fix security holes, and loadsapeople are trying to download them at the same time.

And maybe it's a sign that people are learning (post-Blaster) that it's a good idea to apply the security updates before "malware" writers start to exploit the now-published vulnerabilities.

Flybywire - if you are ever in doubt about a site, use this

javascript:alert("The actual URL is: \t\t" + location.protocol + "//" + location.hostname + "/" + "\nThe address URL is: \t\t" + location.href + "\n" + "\nIf the server names do not match, this may be a spoof.");

Paste into address bar to check for spoof web site.

Someone popped this onto pprune a while ago and it works!

You'll need to edit out the spaces after the colons (put in to avoid a smilie)

Thanks BOAC................
Very usefull
Regards
FBW

No probs at 7:30 BST on my home dial up today.... installation seemed to take ages though (at least 10 mins, and my PC is quite fast).

Yes, these updates are very slow to install, but they do get there eventually.

BOAC's link can be added as a favourite - then it's dead easy to check ANY link you get referred to.

When you add the link to favourites, ensure that the URL is the javascript mentioned above, without the spaces after the colons.