Late yesterday, Microsoft released a slew of updates for Windows Vista and Windows XP, as well as for versions of Microsoft Office.

When I booted up my Vista desktop and XP laptop first thing this morning, both machines retrieved 12 and 10 updates respectively.

One of the Vista updates, flagged as ‘important,’ got my close attention as it was described thus:

This is a reliability update. Install this microcode update to improve the reliability of systems with Intel processors.

Could it be, I wondered, that this will fix the system lockup issue I’ve been experiencing daily since installing Vista on this Dell desktop last April?

Maybe it has, if I understand Knowledge Base article #936357 more or less clearly. If so, no need to wait for Service Pack 1, at least not for this issue.

Since that update this morning, I’ve not experienced a single lockup.