Before upgrading or installing service pack or patch in any of your Microsoft software or even on other software , it is a good idea to do research on the net and check Microsoft support page if there is any side effect as the result of the installation. This is happen to Vista user when the installation of Vista Service Pack a (SP1) resulting some software malfunction.

Thought the list is not that long, but I notice that there are 2 widely used software listed in the list, which are Zone Alarm Security Suite and Trend Micro Internet Security. Although the installing  update will fix the problem, but on unrelated case, there are some users who encounter the problem where SP1 was killing their system .

As some said, the culprit is KB937287 which had caused certain system get rebooted repeatedly or hung forever during the installation process. I own 1 Vista machine, luckily I never encounter any problem during the installation process including this KB

How to check if your system has received any patches from Microsoft?

1. From your My Computer shortcut on your computer desktop, right click your mouse and click Manage

2. Computer Management screen will appear on your screen. From the left navigation menu, expand System Tool -> Event Viewer -> Windows Logs -> System.

3. You’ll see long list of event logs appear on the middle of the screen. Usually, for patch related installation, the source name would be WindowsUpdateClient or Windows Update Agent in Win XP

In Vista, to find if certain patches (named with prefix KB) has been installed, click Find at the right menu bar. Key in the kb# (or ‘kb’ only if you don’t know the exact number’ and search. You can find if the patches was installed or not, or even if it is successful

The ultimate goal of patch or service pack is to eliminate defect or vulnerable that could be exploit by unlawful users, but sometime it does break your computer. So backup your important files regularly.