Updating Windows 7 OS?

[TheEdster75]

Hey All,

Currently updating from 10.3.8 to 10.3.9. I'm running on Windows 7 Home, 64 bit, I have all the specs listed in my about me section.

Anyways, I'm wondering. I built this PC maybe 4 years ago, started with Windows XP with Cakewalk Sonar, and have been running Windows 7 64 bit for over 2 years now and Pro Tools for about a year this coming August.

I have never updated Windows 7. Is that something I should be doing?

Thanks!

[Shan]

If everything is working, then why update? My own main workstation doesn't go online and the OS doesn't get updated, unless it's essential to the operation of Pro Tools as documented by Avid.

Shane

[Bill Denton]

To each his own, but...

I always keep Windows updated, primarily because I sometimes use the Internet from my music computer, and often the Windows Update has various security updates. And, of course, there's also various "bug fixes" in the updates.

I've only been burned once, maybe 12 years ago, when Microsoft put out an update that had a bad "component" in it...MS had a fix out in two days, and I haven't had any problems with their updates since.

Keep in mind that I'm a hobbyist, so a couple of days of downtime didn't hurt anything, and that I always update one of my non-music computers and test it for a couple of days before updating my music computer.

And as in all things, YMMV...

[albee1952]

I would update, but FIRST, I would back up. And by that, I mean use a drive imaging/cloning program, and NOT Windows restore(which bit me in the butt this very week with my home PC). Acronis True Image(and similar programs) allow you to take a "snapshot" of a hard drive. By doing that BEFORE running updates, you can recover if the update goes sour. On my Pro Tools machine, I never install anything(and I mean anything) without first saving a drive image, or doing a straight clone to another drive(and then I install the new clone in place of the original drive). Its amazing how often I need to roll back