Eating Crow, and Worse

By Jerry Pournelle

September 29, 2003

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Column 278 (Continued from the Previous Week)

Updating Office

In addition to holes in the Windows operating system and Web browser, there are vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office, particularly Office 2000. The updates including the security patches are easily found, and you should install them.

When you do the Office 2000 (and for that matter Office XP) updates, you will be warned that you need your original installation disks. I put up with this for years, but last night it wanted Disk One, then Disk Two, then Disk One again, and I figured enough was enough since I have half a dozen machines to update. I copied the original installation disks to Fergie, one of my machines with a lot of disk space. I don't think the folder name matters, but I used Microsoft Office/Disk One, and /Disk Two. Then when update asked for the original disks, I used "browse" to point to the appropriate folder. Moreover, when I did the updates on half a dozen other machines, I mapped Fergie's C drive to the machine I was working on and used browse: That worked too.

As it happens, I hadn't updated my 2000 Office Suite in a long time. That includes the security updates. I'd just sort of forgotten to do it. Nothing bad happened, probably because my system was safely hidden behind my stealthy firewall. I still don't advise you to neglect any security updates.

Incidentally, when you go to update the Office 2003 (AKA Office XP) Suite, it threatens to demand your original installation CD. On three of my machines it never asked for the originals; on one of them it did want the Office XP Professional original. I then copied that disk onto a hard drive just in case, but I haven't again been asked for the Office XP original installation disk. If this makes no sense to you, join the club. The main point is that you can copy the installation disks to a hard drive and point Update there, and it works.

Note that there are no decent tools in Windows for managing updates to either Windows or Office, and if you have a lot of machines to update you're in for some tedium.

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