Well, I updated my XP last week. I selected all the critical updates and it trashed almost the whole
system. I become totally unable to connect to the internet and almost every program disappeared
from the Add/remove program list.
I formattted the HD and tried again... same result. I formatted and installed everything once more and
deselected one of the updates (forgot what its name was, but that update was ment to help the system
repair itself...). This time it works - so far.