[Poser]

Fifty-seven upgrades. No problems yet.

Here's what I do.

1. Run Adaware SE
2. Run virus checker
3. Reboot and log on as administrator
4. Turn off everything in the system tray that will turn off
5. Run the upgrade from a CD
6. Reboot

I'm convinced that some of the stuff running in the background creates problems.

[Stoat]

Agreed - From Win 3.1 and Win 95 on up to my current WinXP Pro I have never had the slightest problem, or even the most minor hiccup with any Microsoft patch or upgrade, and I make sure to keep my system up to date.

Another thing that a person can do is to do a 'clean boot' on your machine

Google Search clean boot sitemicrosoft.com

which should eliminate any conflict issues with background processes.

A lot of people are also simply not aware how easy it is to manage your startup profile to eliminate RAM-eating unnecessary startup processes.  They will have all sorts of garbage running in the background that isn't shown in the taskbar and they wonder why they have problems.