I saw Lawrence Hardins update to thread "Useful utilities" in the "Start Here section"

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=2490

I have installed every patch issued via Microsoft Update - but this patch is not automatic. I have checked - and it is NOT installed on my system (P4 D 945 3.4GHz).

The microsoft KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896256 lists the files that the patch will update. I searched for these on my system. Not surprisingly, one of the files is absent (Halmacpi.dll), but my problem is that for some of the files listed, my system ALREADY HAS LATER VERSION NUMBERS for these files! This means that other patches (issued via automatic update) since have updated some of these files - presumably for other issues. Microsoft does warn that, once an update is corrupted - for instance by system restore - or in this case by manual intervention - that updates need to be repeated.

So, if I run this patch it will possibly undo some other patch update that was issued since - and there is no way of knowing which one.

Can anyone shed any light on this? I don't even know whether the patch will have any benefit for a desktop that is on and crunching at 100% all the time and has all its power saving/processor throttling features disabled anyway! The only thing I wondered is that it might explain variation in Benchmark figures that I have seen (Boinc benchmarks)