badbadmonkey - 4:11 am on Dec 16, 2011 (gmt 0)

Automatic updates - crap. Hangs the parents PC halfway through, destroyed my system and I had to sys restore. Hangs next doors PC whilst updating.

Incremental updates, if things are kept current, shouldn't cause issues. Particularly an upgrade of IE isn't too major.

Fix it, upgrade it, sort it. If you're running an out-of-date version of XP you won't get much empathy from me.

So what happens if you are on dial-up...? Unusable internet for a week?

You presumably have Updates disabled or manual, for the same reason you wouldn't want to be automatically downloading the several hundred MB of routine updates per month.