A recent Windows Update potentially causes problems with Word, Excel,IE,...

Haven't seen this mentioned on the newsgroup already, so I thought I'd
pass it along.

It seems that one of last week's Windows Update patches from Microsoft
(specifically, KB908531) "doesn't play well" with some HP software
products. In particular, "Share-To-Web" and several other
printing/imaging packages from HP.

The symptom I experienced was that "Save As..." caused Word, Excel and
PowerPoint to hang, then become "Not Responding" in the Windows Task
Manager. I also experienced problems with a numerical software package
(MATLAB)hanging whenever I tried to browse to a new folder/directory.

I've also heard of problems with Internet Explorer hanging when entering
short URLS (without the http://www i.e. google.com), but I have no
personal knowledge of this. (I use Mozilla Firefox.)

I'm sure there are other problems as well.

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918165 (Bottom line: Microsoft wants
you to go mucking around in the Registry to fix _their_ mistake!),
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/secur..._round_of.html,

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6062026.html and/or
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125420,00.asp for more details.

Or just Google KB908531 and (problem trouble).

Just another example of Microsoft's superior software QA approach, I
guess...

HTH.

Bob Pownall

I forgot to mention that my Word/Excel/PowerPoint/etc problems went away
when I removed the 908531 patch. (It was implied, but I should have
explicitly said so.)

Bob Pownall

This has been discussed on the microsoft newgroups. One of the MVP's has
posted a fix for this.

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm Line 383 (right hand
side):


"Bob Pownall" wrote in message
...
Haven't seen this mentioned on the newsgroup already, so I thought I'd
pass it along.

It seems that one of last week's Windows Update patches from Microsoft
(specifically, KB908531) "doesn't play well" with some HP software
products. In particular, "Share-To-Web" and several other
printing/imaging packages from HP.

The symptom I experienced was that "Save As..." caused Word, Excel and
PowerPoint to hang, then become "Not Responding" in the Windows Task
Manager. I also experienced problems with a numerical software package
(MATLAB)hanging whenever I tried to browse to a new folder/directory.

I've also heard of problems with Internet Explorer hanging when entering
short URLS (without the http://www i.e. google.com), but I have no
personal knowledge of this. (I use Mozilla Firefox.)

I'm sure there are other problems as well.

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918165 (Bottom line: Microsoft wants
you to go mucking around in the Registry to fix _their_ mistake!),
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/secur..._round_of.html,
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6062026.html and/or
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125420,00.asp for more details.

Or just Google KB908531 and (problem trouble).

Just another example of Microsoft's superior software QA approach, I
guess...

HTH.

Bob Pownall

Haven't seen this mentioned on the newsgroup already, so I thought I'd
pass it along.

It seems that one of last week's Windows Update patches from Microsoft
(specifically, KB908531) "doesn't play well" with some HP software
products. In particular, "Share-To-Web" and several other
printing/imaging packages from HP.

My javascript has stopped working since the updates, only affecting IE ??