MS update should be smarter than it is.

On Tuesday, Microsoft released 18 updates/patches to their products. Since I have my laptop configured to check for updates but ask me if I want them, I received the notice on Tuesday evening that there were updates ready for computer.

I looked at the updates and they all seemed like something I wanted except for two of them. One was an update to Sharepoint and the other was an update to OneNote, two products I have installed but have never used.

After some thought I decided I would allow all updates.

After about three hours of listening to my hard drive spin and my fan run constantly, I decided to find out what was going on with the damned updates. Turns out it was stalled at the 17th update. This update was listed as "Update for Microsoft OneNote 2010 (KB2687277) 32-Bit Edition".

I tried to cancel the update but the process had other ideas and that wasn't happening.

Despite being warned not to turn off my computer, I decided to turn off my computer.

After it rebooted, the machine came back up and within two minutes reported that there were updates ready for my computer.

I checked to see what the updates were and sure enough, one was for SharePoint and the other was for OneNote. I selected the one for SharePoint and it installed no problem. I rebooted my computer as instructed and as soon as it came back up, I was informed there were updates ready for my computer.

I elected the update for OneNote, again, and again, it failed to install.

This was, to say the least, getting a little frustrating.

Once again, I had to hard boot my laptop and it was then that I decided maybe the problem was that I had never activated OneNote.

I started the OneNote product and, like all Microsoft products, it informed me that I had better read the 5 billion page license agreement or I would rot in a Nicaraguan jail cell for the rest of my miserable life being read the US tax code by a herd of newly-minted lawyers

After I said I agree (even though I really have no idea what I agreed to), it activated the product, did some things with an imaginary printer and created an icon in my running tasks bar,

I closed the product and then ran the update.

Lo and Behold, the update started up and my PC immediately informed me there was a program trying its best to show me a message and would I like to see the message. I said yes, I would like to see the message and a message appeared on my screen saying that One Note was trying to create a printer with the same name as an existing printer. I was given the option of clicking a button, which I did, and the update finished installing.

The bottom line here folks is if you are having trouble installing the "Update for Microsoft OneNote 2010 (KB2687277) 32-Bit Edition", it's because you never activated One Note. Activate it, install the update and move on with your life.

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