If you have a problem, you can still go to the internet to look for a fix, or just to identify what caused it.

With the number of people eager to bad-mouth Microsoft, anything that even hints of a Microsoft source of trouble is definitely going to be splattered all over the place. The only glitch in this procedure is that Microsoft often gets blamed (on the internet) for things that have other sources, along with the times when they're identified for having actually shot themselves in their own a... foot.

If you want to do a more direct check, you can go directly to Microsoft and search for the symptoms there; and with any recent patches they've been pretty quick to 'fess up and tell you what needs to be done.

Every Microsoft patch has a Knowledge Base article to explain what it does, so you can look at what patches have been downloaded recently, and check out the KB articles on any patches that have come in around the time that the problem appeared. If any one else has reported a problem with the patch, you should find a corrective action that directly addresses what to do. (Most critical patches also have an associated "Security Bulletin" as well, if you want more details.)

At the Microsoft update site, there's an option to "show installed updates" that will give you a complete list of what's on your machine, and when it was added, or just go to Control Panel, Add Remove Programs, and check the option to "show updates."

If you think a patch may have caused a problem, you can unintstall most of them in Control Panel. (There are some that can't be uninstalled, and for those you need to search Microsoft for fixes.) If uninstalling the one you think might be responsible doesn't fix things, it probably wasn't the cause. You don't have to worry much about reinstalling the patch; because the next update will probably reinstall it for you, or it soon will be "rolled into" a later update for the people who missed it in the first round.

John