Marshall Brain's Blog

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Computer Repair #4

[This post is part of an ongoing series of posts in December cataloging how much time I spend repairing the computers here in the Brain household.]

Today there is another update for Windows XP:

Security Update for Windows XP (KB810217)
Download size: 1.4 MB, < 1 minute
A security issue has been identified in FrontPage Server Extensions. This vulnerability could allow an attacker to run code of their choice on your system. You can help protect your computer by installing this update from Microsoft. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer. Once you have installed this item, it cannot be removed. Read more...

I don't use FrontPage at all. The sentence "Once you have installed this item, it cannot be removed." is interesting. So I click on the "Read More..." tag to see what's up. I'm expecting a page that says, "Here's who needs this update and why." Instead I end up at a generic TechNet home page. There does not appear to be an explanation of this patch, but maybe I missed it.

There's another End User License Agreement. The system downloads the 1.4 megabyte patch, and then it installs in about 3 minutes. It does not ask me to restart, so this is pretty quick. Maybe 5 minutes. Then multiply that by the other machines -- total time spent on this repair will be about 20 minutes.