Windows 7 - Hotfixes

I've been going through the list of available hotfixes on this forum, hoping to find one or more that might relates to some issues that I'm trying to solve, but after reading the articles on them, I'm usually left confused after reading all of the ifs, ands, buts and warnings, even though at least part of the things that it describes are applicable to the situation.

Every hotfix is prefaced with the warning that it should only be used in the situation described, and I'm wondering what happens if I misinterpret and install the wrong one? How much of a gamble is involved?

You are not the only one that is left dazed and confused after TRYING to read the articles.

Somehow someway the Auto Update feature got turned on on my system and I woke the other day to find my system had rebooted and I had 18 new updates.

You don't know how POed I am.
I'm just about ready to reimage my drive to about 3 days before the Auto Updates.
They have also used about 1.5GB of space with the shadow copy and backup of the update and the files they updated.

You could create a restore point then install the update. BTW that warning is just standard practice as you've noted. Sort of like overclocking your computer is dangerous.

Anyway create a restore point try the update and if it works good, if not revert back to before you created the restore point.

System Restore Point - Create

Good luck.

What issues are you trying to solve? Are they related to updates? And have automatic updates caused you problems?

No, as far as I know, updates are not the cause of any of my problems. I have been trying to both fix boot time problems that have continued to grow worse, and system freezes that have been making me do forced restarts. I don't know that any of the hotfixes would address the crashes, but two or three that I have found may possibly help with reboot time. However, as I said previously, the hotfix descriptions are not totally correlating with my problems, but enough so, that I believe that they are close.

An example is this hotfix:

An update that improves the startup performance of Windows 7 and of Windows Server 2008 R2 is available

Unfortunately, it is designed for SP1. which I have not, nor intend to install. Yet, I feel pretty sure that part of my problem is exactly what is described. So far, I have found nothing for the system freezes, but it seems that they are some how related to certain graphical programs, like some games, and video functions. I have done a number of things to try to rectify this but the search for the cure is an ongoing task.

Why don't you want SP1??? It's done no harm to mine or lot's of other's systems.

Just curious?

Also it's not designed for SP1. Read the Prerequisites section of the Hotfix.

To apply this hotfix, you must be running one of the following operating systems:

Windows 7
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

What?
Right there is says 7 SP1.

Actually it reads either or.......

In other words one of the 4 available OS options. Note that there IS an option to run the hotfix without SP1 installed

Source: An update that improves the startup performance of Windows 7 and of Windows Server 2008 R2 is available

Thanks, I had paid more attention to the way that it was listed on the download page, where it was not so explicit. That one is a go.