Microsoft updates

I just recently came out of big headaches regarding windows updates...I worked with MS for days to get the updates to work and I finally gave up and recovered the whole system. My pc is working great but there are 40 or so updates waiting for me to install and I have lost confidence that Microsoft knows what it is doing with these updates. I'm afraid that if I install them I'll just have all these problems all over again. Any recommendations to determine which updates I really need?

First make a image of your hard drive with this
Free Backup Software: Paragon Backup & Recovery Free Edition - Overview

Then set update not to update automatically.

Then install one or two at a time and make a system restore point after each.
Then as soon as you have a problem use restore to go back.

Then do not install the problem updates.

If you encounter major problems you can use the system image, from Paragon, to go back to good times
You may also want to update Paragon after every 6 or so updates.