Ah, those updates. I'll comb through the bios. Thanks. That's a very good point. It seems almost every update I do wants to slide in some parasite program that will start automatically and drag the system down. Sometimes they tell you, other times they don't. You need to keep on checking services.msc, msconfig and Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel to see what surprises await.
Not really worried about malware. I never run Antivirus programs anymore and haven't had a problem in years. I read email in Plain Text so that helps I suppose.
I really hated Win7. Its dumbed down in so many areas. But it may be a necessity I realize. I would like to have a good 64bit OS as well and XP64 wasn't taken seriously so there are so many lacking drivers. Linux is where I should point myself of course used in conjunction with a 64bit version of Windows.