Woody: Thanks very much for your response. I’ve got a couple of questions about it in order to try to clarify my understanding. Here are my questions:
1. In your response, you said that in broad terms you “have those in Group B skip the Recommended updates”. How do I tell which ones are “Recommended updates”? In my Update window, I see the words “Important” and “Optional” and “Security”, but I don’t see the word “Recommended”. Generally the window looks pretty much like Figure 4-4 in your book “Windows 7 All- in-One for Dummies”, and I don’t see the word “Recommended” in that Figure 4-4. I assume that there’s a difference between “Important” and “Recommended” because Microsoft uses the terminology “give me recommended updates the same way I receive important updates”. On Page 659 of your book, you say “there’s a very thin line between Important and Recommended”, and then you say “see the nearby ‘What’s a critical update?’ sidebar”. But when I read that sidebar, I don’t see the word “Recommended” there. Also, I don’t see the word “Recommended” in the Microsoft article entitled “Description of the standard terminology that is used to describe Microsoft software updates”, and so I’m having trouble finding the difference between a “Recommended” update and an “Important” Update. So I’d appreciate it if you could answer how to tell which updates are “Recommended”.
2. In your reply, you also said “The most important part: If you see something that’s checked, don’t uncheck it unless the instructions specifically tell you to uncheck.” In my experience, usually the ones that Microsoft lists as “Important” are checked, and so based on that, I would install those ones that are checked (after you’ve given the Defcon Go-ahead). But I’m wondering if the waiting period you give before giving the Defcon 3 go-ahead is long enough. Here is one possible example: I’ve kept screenshots of all my Windows Updates windows for the past few years and I notice that in April of 2016, the box for KB3133977 was checked. As far as I can tell from your Defcon 3 article of April 28, 2016, you did not recommend unchecking the box for that one. However later in May of 2016, it surfaced that that was a problematic update which then resulted in some postings on your own website in May of 2016 as well as elsewhere on the Internet (see article “Microsoft Warns Windows 7 Has A Serious Problem” at https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2016/05/04/microsoft-warns-windows-7-boot-up-problem/#42105aad7295 . According to that article, it turns out that in April of 2016 Microsoft switched it from “Optional” to “Recommended”. I do know that I myself unchecked the box for that update, but I think I did so based on your article of March 11, 2016, in which you said “In the future, only install security patches for Win7 and 8.1. Don’t install optional patches”. It had appeared to me that it wasn’t described by Microsoft as either a security patch or an optional patch (it appeared to me that it was described as an “Important” patch), so I made an assumption that I should uncheck the box for it. But some people may not have, and perhaps some of them ran into trouble later. This is just something I happened to run across, and so it’s possible I’ve got the whole thing mixed up, but don’t have time to research the whole history on it (and it’s a little confusing also because my screenshot shows it as “Important” rather than “Recommended” and I’m still a little unclear about the difference between “Optional”, “Recommended” and “Important” partially because in my mind the word “recommended” has a connotation of being “optional”), but the only reason I mention it is to help me understand Windows Updates better, and also it makes me wonder whether your waiting time is long enough before you give the “Go Ahead”, and so I ‘d appreciate any thoughts you might have on this. It’s quite possible that this may be an example of why you gave it a level of Defcon 3, rather than a higher- level Defcon 4 or 5, but I just thought I would ask.
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