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[Peter_T]

Hey everything's working so well I don't want it to change - is there any reason why I should keep my Windows 7 updates going?  Most of those are security patches, right?  So if I'm only running MC and safely behind a firewall, I should be fine right?  Maybe?

[glynor]

Does the computer have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and web browser installed?

If the answers are yes, then you should keep doing the updates.

If it is a single-use computer, and you and everyone with access to the machine are security conscious (and never make exceptions to "check email" or browse the web, "just this once, for a little bit") then no, you might not have to.  You should also run as a limited user, if possible (which mitigates a large majority of the remote code execution vulnerabilities discovered over the past year or two).

Even then, it'd still be a good idea to keep an eye out for bug fixes that you want, though, and particularly egregious security problems.

But, pay attention not to just how you use it, but how others might use it too.  Malware doesn't usually come from sites identifiable as "bad" (the so-called dark corners of the Internet).  It comes from Yahoo, and the BBC's website, and hacked ad networks spread across hundreds or thousands of sites.  It comes from poorly maintained restaurant websites when you're just trying to look up the menu, and so on and so forth.

[InflatableMouse]

It's extremely rare these days that security updates cause problems for end users, at least that I have seen. If it happens, in most cases it can be rolled back.

So even if you would be good and save (see Glynors reply), my take is its better to be safe than sorry. Just run the updates, see sentence one.

[Peter_T]

Yeah that's more or less what I thought.  It is a headless machine that runs quietly on the bookshelf and just serves music, but I do RDP to work on my music collection and that often involves the use the browser, looking at rateyourmusic.com and wikipedia and - from time to time - less-secure fan sites etc. 

I'll keep the bug fix and security updates going and review the optional ones...  thanks for your feedback.

[glynor]

One thing I strongly, strongly recommend is to come up with a good, simple-to-use backup and imaging system.  I can, personally, strongly recommend Macrium Reflect.

If you have the system working very well now, pull an image of the System Drive, put it on an external disk, label it well, and if badness ever happens, restore the image and you're way closer than you otherwise would be to being going again should the "pants fall down" in the future.

Because I keep "known good" images of my systems readily available, if stuff like this happens, I don't have to worry about repairing installs of Windows in-place.  It takes me around 8-10 minutes to create (or write) a full image of my server's system SSD.

[Peter_T]

Great suggestion Glynor.  I keep very good backups, onsite and in the cloud, of everything important.  But I don't grab images, and I think I will start for my music server.  Like most of you I have lots of old HDs and it wouldn't take much to grab an image so I can go back in time when Windows decides to stop cooperating. 

Cheers.

[dtb300]

Something else to consider for making an Image of your Music Server.

A good FREE version to make IMAGES or CLONES is a program called CloneZilla.   It just works.

[glynor]

Something else to consider for making an Image of your Music Server.

A good FREE version to make IMAGES or CLONES is a program called CloneZilla.   It just works.

CloneZilla is pretty cool.  I've actually had trouble with it on a few systems, though.  Seems fiddly about motherboards (these were AMD boards, and it was a long while back).

Reflect can do Hot Transfers (imaging a system while it is running, without rebooting), though, which is well worth the $50 to me.  But, anyway, they do have a free edition:
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

I don't see anything in the comparison chart about hot transfer or shadow copy limitations on the free one.

[InflatableMouse]

There's a full comparison further down the page in case you missed it .

Differential and Incremental backups and File and Folder backup were the two reasons for me to buy Macrium Reflect in the past. The company is also quick to respond to support requests (forums too) and when I asked them why they were spamming me with discount offers for Macrium licenses while I just purchased instead of offering me discounts on household licenses, he actually offered me good discount on a household license  .

Really one of the best purchases I made on Windows. Close second to MC, that is .

From within Reflect you can also create a boot/rescue cd. It scans your pc's drivers and can include them on the cd. This allowed me to backup and restore to network drives. I thought that was pretty neat.