Subscriber Steve Kimball wrote recently to ask:

Terry
I saw a list of preferred Microsoft updates with corresponding “not” preferred updates somewhere and I can no longer find it. Can you help? Thanx,
Steve Kimball

As far as i’m concerned, any that Microsoft classifies as “Critical” or “High Priority” are to be installed.

I almost never install any other updates that come that way — especially not the “hardware drivers” ones. The important thing to understand on the drivers is that they are generic drivers for specific chipsets.

In my case, my motherboard manufacturer had a tweaked version of the chipset and driver — and when I installed the driver that Windows XP identified for me as an update, I could no longer boot.

I really don’t know any sites that list preferred and non-preferred Microsoft updates.

Steve wrote back to indicate that he was concerned about the Windows Genuine Advantage / Windows Genuine Advantage Notification programs and that he had just reinstalled Windows XP on his computer.

I didn’t bother to prevent them — since my copies of Windows are legitimate and I knew my readers would most likely install everything, I wanted to do the same thing.

More significantly, the update item would be presented over and over unless I specifically set the update program not to present the item.

Note also that, if you don’t validate your software, you can not download many additional items at Microsoft.com.

Your choice. I use the approach that I previously mentioned — if Microsoft calls it critical or high priority, I do the update.