Does the yellow shield in the system tray go away? Do you even know what I’m talking about? I’ll make it easy. On Wednesday, look in the bottom right corner of your computer desktop window and look to see if there is a picture of a little yellow shield. If not, jump to the next paragraph. If so, hover your mouse pointer over it. You may see a window that says that you have updates to install. Click on it. Install them. Go ahead – it’s OK. In fact, it’s a good thing.

When you think the updates are installed, click on Start, then Programs, then Windows Updates. When your browser opens up and the Windows Update page completes loading, click on the link on the left that allow you to review your update history. Were all your updates installed successfully? Scroll down the page and look back a while. If they were installed successfully, great. If they weren’t, then you should find out why.

Microsoft offers free support for Windows Updates. My experience with Microsoft Updates support has been pretty good. Of course usually I have a couple tricks up my sleeve for getting updates to install successfully. Unfortunately, my tricks include things I wouldn’t have the average user try.

I recommend that you check your updates because I see clients’ computers often where the little yellow shield shows up every day. My clients think that Microsoft puts out a lot of updates, but what they don’t know is that the updates have been failing so that little yellow shield keeps coming back.