Michael -

Both of the Update Articles (first two links in first post of the thread) include:

"Customers in the U.S. and Canada can receive technical support from Microsoft Product Support Services at 1-866-PCSAFETY. There is no charge for support calls that are associated with security updates."

"International customers can receive support from their local Microsoft subsidiaries. There is no charge for support that is associated with security updates. For more information about how to contact Microsoft for support issues, visit the International Support Web site."

The US/Canada phone number, if I translated it right, is:

1-866-PCSAFETY = 1-866-727-2338-9

(The "extra 9" at the end may connect to a local extension, or may be just extraneous to make it spell something.)

A general article that might be helpful, if you can find a reference to the specific symptoms you're getting, is at Issues after you install updates to Internet Explorer or Windows.

I don't see an indication of whether the Win98 and WinME included cumulative security issues, but the usual procedure for "Critical Updates" is to include all prior such patches, so problems caused by earlier patches could have popped up. This article is a "cumulative summary" with separate links to more specific info on each of over a dozen separate issues. Although only a few of the issues are specific to Win98 or WinME many of them relate to IE issues that could apply to any OS version.

I don't find any indication that a significant number of people have had problems with these patches, and everything included in them was widely distributed to users of current OSs some time ago. Use with Win98 and WinME is still fairly "new" so something may pop up later. The support guys may have identified "common glitches" that haven't been published yet.

One common "user specific" cause of failure after security update is the presence of something on the machine that uses an "unapproved/illegal" process that got blocked by the update.

1. Viral malware is commonly in this category, but we can assume that you've been using AV with current definitions, so that's unlikely. There is the possibility that an old infection was not completely removed, and remnants in Startup and/or registry could still be making a call to a blocked service.

2. Spyware is a common source of problems like this, but we can assume that you've been using current versions with current signature updates of both Spybot and AdAware on a regular basis. Here, as well, there's the possibility that a very old infection, not completely cleaned out, could have left remnants, especially if you've just "deleted" the .exe file but didn't look for registry entires, startup .dll or data files, etc.

3. Adware is a separate category. Much of this is detected by the AntiSpyware utilities, but quite a lot of it - especially search toolbars - looks like "a program you want" and will be ignored. (Your Google/Yahoo toolbar is one of these, and others can disguise themselves in the same manner.) "Freebie" games often carry Adware that isn't removed when you uninstall the game. As an example only:

"This problem can occur if you open the e-mail attachment game "Yo Mama, Osama". This is a game that offers free phone products if you can shoot Osama Bin Laden…."
Info at KB Article 312931, but this is just an example, so look only if curious - (or you've played the game).

But we can assume that you have never run a game or installed a program just because it's free and looks harmless.?

4. Multiple applications of the same kind, that use shared resources can theoretically cause a problem. As an example, the browser set as your default browser should load it's utilities at startup. Another browser, with the new rules after update, may not be able to load or access its own separate "version" of some shared or similar resource. I don't know that this is, or ever has been, a problem with the common browsers, but it's the kind of conflict that sometimes occurs. (Very rarely in one obsolete OS installation, I saw the situation where opening a specific graphics editing program first prevented subsequent run of a different similar program, but if you opened in the other order they both would work.) You could do a "quick test" by setting a different default browser, reboot, and see if things change.

5. Any "legacy" program that used non-compliant processes could find a required function "missing" after a (security esp.) patch. Normally the problem should appear only when you try to open the specifically affected program, so that's usually obvious.

In other words, BTSOOM. No specific ideas here, but until/unless you can identify specifically where the failure happens and what specific process crashes it's impossible to guess where to tweak.

John