It's always annoyed me the length of time Microsoft sit on patches. In the past I've experienced issues with particular products (particularly visual studio.net), and after searching through the msdn.microsoft.com site it's not been uncommon to find knowledge base articles acknowledging the problem, and stating there was a fix but that it was only available via Microsoft PS. If it's been important enough, I've jumped through the hoops-of-fire fun that is contacting PS and promising my first-born in exchange for the fix, but normally I just move on and forget about it. I appreciate that Microsoft are loath to release patches that haven't been fully regression tested, but seeing as these patches often pile up for months if not years before making it to an offical servicepack, it's one of those death by a thousand cut annoyances.
However, it looks like someone with the pull in Microsoft has arranged for these patches to see the light of day in open download format, so if you want to apply particular patches, visit here to download them. For visual basic.net users the two key ones: are KB915038 and KB917452:
Microsoft KB917452 "FIX: You may receive Visual Basic compiler error messages when you are developing a Visual Basic 2005 project in Visual Studio 2005 Visual studio" - in the real world this translates as "if you're foolish enough to run 2 copies of vs.net 2005 at the same time, or else compile a project of more than a few thousand lines, vs.net will fall over more than a drunk on a whiskey bender"
KB917452 "FIX: You may experience performance issues when you use solutions that contain large Visual Basic projects in Visual Studio 2005" -in the real world this translates as "a large solution really means 3 or more projects, if you're insane enough to leave edit and continue on, vs.net will have the breaking strain of a kitkat"