Installation of MS04-044 (KB 885835) broke the S3 Standby
(suspend-to-RAM) timer on my system running W2K SP4. After
installation of the hotfix, the timer under Control Panel -> Power
Options -> Power Schemes (tab), "System standby:" would work if set to
5 minutes or less. The timer failed if set to 10 minutes or longer.
The timers for "Turn off monitor:" and "Turn off hard disks:" seemed
to work normally. The system would still go into standby via Start,
Shut Down..., Stand by.
Event Viewer, as usual for power management (PM), showed nothing.
Uninstallation of the hotfix restored full standby timer
functionality. Reinstallation of the hotfix broke the timer again.
Since all hardware and software on my system is otherwise working
normally, I fully expect this problem to be observed elsewhere.
<...>
I hope MS will fix this bug and, more importantly, test PM
functionality before releasing future security hotfixes.
Unfortunately, MS's track record is dismal. I already reported this
same problem after installing MS04-011 (KB 835732). (All but two of
the 25 files updated by MS04-044 were also updated by MS04-011.) The
Usenet post can be viewed here: http://tinyurl.com/5brk2 I also
reported it to MS Tech Support. The Microsoft case number is
SRX040507600406 AFAIK, there was never any followup.
Since the anomaly is identical in both hotfixes, it's obvious that MS
is omitting a step in hotfix testing to check for power management
compatibility. It's also obvious that posting here and reporting the
problem to MS Tech Support will, most likely, not result in a fix.
This post is therefore for info only. :-(
Some cynics might suggest that this is Microsoft's subtle way of forcing people to migrate to Windows XP, but I can't believe that a company as attuned to its customers as MS would attempt such a ploy.