I so didn’t need this. I’m a long way from my home office and I helped some family members to update their Windows XP PCs with February’s massive set of Windows patches. Since they fixed a lot of serious bugs in these patches-including the one Google blames China for and the 17-year old security hole — I figured this was a must patch job. What could go wrong? Lots.

One of the XP PCs started having BSODs (Blue Screen of Death) even before it could properly boot up. Two others booted up just fine, but then Windows Explorer started locking up. I needed this like a hole in the head.

It turns out I wasn’t the only one seeing BSODs in the aftermath of this XP fix. Many others are seeing the same kind of XP lock-ups. So, if after you patch your XP system, and you then reboot to see a message like the one below:

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

Technical Information:

STOP: 0x00000050 (0x80097004, 0x00000001, 0x80515103, 0x00000000).

Congratulations and welcome to the party. You’re in good company.

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