As with any software that is released, there are potential bugs. Sometimes it's from a program functionality standpoint, sometimes it's a security update because there was an exploit in some of the code that could be used to compromise your system.
Microsoft publishes knowledge base articles that explain the fixes and what they intend to fix. You are certainly more than welcome to go look up any of these articles and read all about them. The problem with this approach is that you typically aren't going to be savvy enough to really understand exactly what the updates do, and you are less likely to know whether that fix is something that touches a component that you will knowingly or unknowingly use. Perhaps you think to yourself, "Well, I never do that", but maybe when you launch File Explorer Windows makes a call that does that, but you aren't aware of it. Are you really going to read all of these articles and try to ascetain if you use something or not and exactly how it's going to impact you? Or are you going to be like most users who say, "well, it was published for a reason and might as well be safe rather than sorry".
If you ever were to call Microsoft for a problem on your computer, do you know what they are going to tell you after "have you tried rebooting it"? That's right, they are going to ask you to run Windows updates and get all the updates installed. Of course, why would a person on the phone try to fix something that may already be fixed in a patch?
Every once in a while, Microsoft will push out a patch that causes a small group of people a problem. When it happens to enough people, they pull the update so it won't impact others. And they typically release another patch to correct the first issue in a very short amount of time.
You will always find naysayers who have run into an issue in the past that has caused them to modify whatever they do. But the general fact here remains that the overwhelming vast majority of Windows users run Windows updates on a regular basis and their computers run just fine. What would you rather have happen to you and what do you think is more likely.
- You install the updates and it fixes a bunch of problems you weren't even aware of and it prevents you from ever seeing any of these numerous problem
- You hit that one random thing that impacts something like 1% of the population and this causes you a problem
I'd bet my hard earned money that #1 is the one you will see 99.999% of the time.
I've built many computers, and I've fixed many computers, and I have almost 40 years experience with working with computers and I have never once said, "boy, it's too bad you installed all of these security and performance enhancements from the vendor" These have pretty much never been the root cause of a problem.
