Microsoft’s latest wheeze: let’s blow up the network!

I got a critical update automatically downloaded to my PC this week by Microsoft's never-ending update factory.

The PC went into the usual "don't turn off the power whilst I get my knickers in a twist" update load pattern and rebooted after a few minutes.

As it's a Windows 7 PC, it rebooted fast - about five minutes - compared to my old Vista machine.

Fandabodozy.

A few days later, I'm on the road using the PC and it's unable to get wifi access.

It seems to be connected but the wifi icon has that little yellow exclamation mark over it, to show something's up.

I click on the icon and it tells me that I'm connected to the hotel's network but the hotel's network is not connected to the internet.

The hotel tells me the wifi is free and is working fine for everyone else.

They cannot work out the problem and what really got me is that, after troubleshooting network problems, Microsoft offer additional help:

 

But the help is all based upon online support, online searches and such like.

That's no good when you can't get onto the internet because the wifi connection is working but not connecting.

Darn.

So I get to the airport and the wee laptop picks up the network and gets me online ... but very slowly.

Then I get home and it picks up the home network but can't get online again.

Something's up.

After trying 300 things including jogging round the laptop twice, I decide that restore time has come.

I go back to the OS of two weeks ago and the problem is solved, network fine, no issues.

You guessed it, Microsoft's critical updates from the never-ending update factory had blown the wifi connection.

No wonder Microsoft's building Windows 8 using Apple's strategies.