Auto-update Annoyances

[JDoors]

OK, I have these updates that check continuously (and I want it that way):

Antivirus

Firewall

Security Suite

ISP software

ISP IE toolbar

Windows

And these check when I run the program while online (some I want, some give me no option):

Windows Media Player

Quicktime

Realplayer

Camera software

Adobe Reader

Half a dozen others.

Then the software that I have to manually choose to update:

Too many to list.

SOMETHING's updating almost every day, many require a reboot, many install routines are poorly written & fail causing more work for me, it's getting in the way dammit!

Today the ISP's IE toolbar waits until I'm about to surf to tell me an update's available. How long can that take? Not long to d/l, not too long to install, but then it requires a reboot. Fine, "windows is updating system files please wait ... " Windows boots & I get that little drummer dialgog, "Updating settings." Then the ISP install runs, "Install now?" Sure! Go ahead ... Chugga, chugga, chugga, away it goes ... CHOKE.

It stops & says it was interrupted, run again later. I close that and the Windows drummer thing is still there, it hadn't finished yet! No wonder the software install choked. So the Windows update finishes, and there's NO CLUE as to how to run that install now. No icon, no Start menu shortcut, running the ISP manual update doesn't show that particular update. Now I have a half-finished update with who knows what changes it had managed to make before it stalled.

Jeez, when are we gonna get those perfect Star Trek computers Gene Rodenberry promised us?

<edit> Update: (Get it?) There's a new icon in the ISP's IE toolbar so it must have completed or nearly so. As usual, they add insult to injury: There's no way to turn that icon off and it's one I will never, ever use (maybe the option to turn it off was the last "to do" item in the install and it got skipped? That'd be my luck).

Edited September 30, 2005 by JDoors

[blim]

Which is why computer maintenance always scares me to death!!!! I like the auto update stuff, too, because it forces this chicken to update, but oh boy does Son bellyache when Mcafee decides to update while he's playing online....now I don't see any difference, but he swears it slows everything down. I keep threatening to install windows 95 so he can see what slow is

Hope your ISP update works out!

Liz

[TheTerrorist_75]

The only program I allow to auto-update is Panda Titanium. All other programs I check for updates manually on Sunday mornings while watching my NASCAR and NFL previews.

[Guest martyarty]

yes i agree . it is a pain.

but nesccery

and to illistrate that

recently a friend brought his comt to me

and it had a whos whos

on spyware worms virus. and hijack

it even had a connection hijack

as well as a browser hijack

but it had all these applis to stop them but .

none had been up dated .

so we had to reinstall xp.

the owner is much the wiser now

he thought compts were for people like nasa.

so as much as we get p-----d off with up dating .

it is a must

as my friend found out

the reason i posted this

was to warn others not to be complacent

ide love to have sent his compt to the board

so posters can see what happens when

you leave thing as they are .

marty

[Flatiron]

The only program I allow to auto-update is Panda Titanium. All other programs I check for updates manually.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Me too! Except my AV is PC-cillin.

What a coincidence, before I finished this reply PC-cillin popped up for another

Update, 2nd one today.

[rv56]

I guess I'm the same as TT75....about the only thing that I got to auto-update is Avast. Other than that I manual update or catch the notices at the Software Update postings.

[robroy]

Avg is my only autoupdate, 3:00am it checks for updates then runs a scan

[JDoors]

... it had all these applis to stop them but none had been up dated. ...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yup, I have to agree. Although I said it's annoying I never said I'd turn any of those off. ESPECIALLY the A/V, firewall & security suite. One or more of those seem to update every day, sometimes even more often than that. No way I would keep them up-to-date if I had to remember to do it manually. And if I were to do it once a week (as if I'd remember) I'd be five, six, seven or more updates behind by that time.

Honestly? I don't know how those companies stay in business. For a reasonable price they do a lot of research, write a lot of code, and send out a kajillion updates every day. But shhhhh! Don't tell them I said their prices are resonable.

[Chappy]

Hiya

JDoors, usually if an update stalls or corrupts before it completes, no changes are made to anything. The way these things operate is that it is all held in memory until the update completes and then it writes it to the disk. This way, if there is a problem with the update, it doesn't make system changes that are half completed.

I can't say 100% that all program updates do it this way, but thats the standard practice, and ones that don't usually have an undo command that returns things to the way they were before the update started.

Also, if you want to find out whats updating every day, get this little port monitor and it can tell you what programs are making, or trying to make an outside connection.

Active Ports

Like you guys, my only autoupdate is my AV, all others are set to ask first.

[JDoors]

Saving the actual writing 'til last makes sense and I've seen that behavior before, but this was an Earthlink update and their install programs have given me plenty of trouble in the past. Bad programmers I imagine (oh boy, I wanna say somethin' about ... umm ... WHERE the programming is done. Is that diplomatic enough?).

As for knowing what's updating that's not a problem as the ones that frequently update always display an icon in the task bar as they download and a dialog box before they install. Earthlink? Now that's another story: They update much less frequently but I have seen in the past where there was a lot of activity when I wasn't doing anything. I tracked it to an Earthlink update (ran NetStat Live to be sure there was traffic and to see how much [a lot, which worried me enough to begin looking for the source], then, and I don't know how I figured this out, ran Windows Explorer and looked for TEMP files -- There they were, they belonged to Earthlink).

Haven't seen it do that for a long, long time: hopefully they got enough complaints about "unannounced" updates and don't do that any more.