"stay current with automatic updates" balloon near system tray driving me nuts!

[chunkstyle]

hey guys

can any of you please tell me what this "stay current with automatic updates" balloon that appears near the system tray means? it pops up very frequently & is starting to really bug me. is it a microsoft thing where theyre trying to get me to
visit their site & update my version of windows? or is it something that some other application added to my system?

i'm (in my typical slow, dim-bulb way) now stasrting to wonder if maybe this is something i shouldn't be ignoring & closing all the time.

is it related to sp1? my current version doesn't have it, but per someone's advice here, i just ordered a cd copy from microsoft a few days ago.

if this balloon isn't important, can i disable it?

thank you!

[RJ]

It is indeed a M$ thing. It's part of Windows XP which wants you to go to the M$ site and get XP updates, but you can disable it:

Rightclick on "My Computer", select properties. "Automatic Updates" must be somewhere there on XP SP1, and there you can disable it, then WinXP won't bug you anymore.

RJ

[Miz]

Go to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Services, double click on Automatic Update, click the Stop button to turn it off without having to reboot, select Disabled from the drop-down list, click OK.

If you haven't already, go over to Black Viper's site and use his guide to turn off the rest of XP's unnecessary services.

It is a good idea to go to the Windows update site once a week or so and get all the updates. Wait until after you have SP1 installed, though...that'll cut way down on the number of updates you need to get.

[CaptTuna]

....of course not updating Windows XP may leave you open to all the newer virii and scripts that seem to attack Windows products all the time.

[pam123]

Originally posted by CaptTuna ....of course not updating Windows XP may leave you open to all the newer virii and scripts that seem to attack Windows products all the time.

Ditto.
Why you don't you just click on it.
When you do it will give you the choice of having XP install updates automatically or notifying you what's available and giving you the option to read through them and install the ones you need ( I recommend the last ).

[patrickt]

And, you'll have to do it again when SP2 comes out in a couple of months. I let XP download critical updates and I go on Sunday morning and check and see if there are any others I need.

Blackviper is interesting and so is the Elder Geek. I think EG does a better job of explaining what's what. Nevertheless, I've noticed my manic tweaking always precedes reinstalling the system. Not a coincidence.