How high are the chances that a new critical windows update will cause problems?

[Matt_Smi]

I am not talking about service packs here just the critical updates that you get. I am always a bit hesitant/nervous in installing them as it seems you always hear a few cases where they crippled someone’s computer or caused other problems. If you system is in fine running order and not already messed up, just how likely do you do you think the chance of running into problems from a critical windows update is?

[rightcoast]

Not as big as running into problems if you don't. The updates don't "fix bugs" They (for the most part) patch vulnerabilities the PC has to attack. Some of the patches patch what are called exploits, sometimes needing nothing but packet sent your way to overflow a buffer. Wham, crackers in, no virus nessesary.
In other words do the updates (set a restore point first to be safe).

[Statica]

Just a note: Unless you've turned off system restore or something as drastic All Microsoft issued patches will automatically create a restore point before installation

[rightcoast]

Yeah, I leave it off, unless I want to set a point for some reason. Forget sometimes not everyone does that.
In fact most don't do that.
I like to live dangerously , that and I hate the way System Restore and Indexing chew up the HDD and resources.

[autotran]

I just had a problem when the last nine critical updates were installed between aprox. Feb 15-19. My Linksys router stopped working and when I went on AOL direct with my DSL modem I could read my e-mail OK but I couldn't do anything else. I uninstalled the first four of these updates, but that didn't help. I then uninstalled the remaining five and logged on thru my DSL modem and everything was working OK again. My router still would not work however. I then made what I thought was a mistake, and clicked on the automatic update icon and reinstalled eight of these updates. I rebooted and discovered that everything was still working OK, so it wasn't a mistake. I don't know if my problem was due to some corruption during the first install or because critical update KB885295 was not reinstalled, it never showed up again and I don't know where it came from originally.
I then reconnected my router and logged on to my Linksys Setup screen and discovered that on PPPoE my user name had disappeared. I typed it in, saved settings and everything was back to normal, just like before the updates were installed.
So, in my case, the critical updates did cause a problem and it took two days to solve it. I called both AOL & Linksys technical support for help to start and neither one was able to help me with my problem. AOL came up with the wrong answer and Linksys was just pathetic.