Latest Microsoft Security Updates

[nikster]

Just a word of warning: The security updates from this tuesday - labeled highly critical by the Software Giant - will reset your default browser to the glorious IE7.

I would think that's a sleazy way to promote your own sub-standard software if another company did it. But from the largest software maker in the world - a_ssholes, is all I can say. Why resort to cheap tricks? Why not just make a better program.

I feel it's a breach of trust when this kind of stuff is done as part of security updates. Switching me from Firefox to IE7, if anything, lowers my security and in any case it's not something I asked MS to mess with. I hope they get sued over it. Bastards!

I have noticed that most of the recent updates - presumably the security fixes for IE7 itself - reset the default browser.

[Luckydog]

If you have one of the MANY illegal copies of XP then beware!

When you ask for the latest updates to be installed they send something nasty to make your PC play-up!

Can't blame them I suppose........

[cdnvic]

I feel it's a breach of trust when this kind of stuff is done as part of security updates. Switching me from Firefox to IE7, if anything, lowers my security and in any case it's not something I asked MS to mess with. I hope they get sued over it. Bastards!

Wow, how angry do you get over a real problem?

I just updated two XP installations and everything went fine. Firefox is still default.

[astral]

No problems here, either.

[peter991]

I did the 14mb critical update package this afternoon. In my case, after the update, IE7 was unable to connect to the internet. No problems with Firefox or Outlook Express. Took a few minutes to figure out the problem. Fixed it - and decided to turn the tables on Microsoft and make Firefox my default browser.

Peter

[nikster]

No problems here, either.

Humm... must be just me then! *something* did it so I blamed the MS update, but if that's not the case, sorry, everything retracted, and sincerest apologies to the MS behemoth ... and the fanbois. Just a broken XP, no bad intent.

BTW this is a genuine copy of XP professional, came with the laptop.

[nikster]

I feel it's a breach of trust when this kind of stuff is done as part of security updates. Switching me from Firefox to IE7, if anything, lowers my security and in any case it's not something I asked MS to mess with. I hope they get sued over it. Bastards!

Wow, how angry do you get over a real problem?

Yeah I got somewhat worked up because this wasn't the first time this happened, and I last time it also happened after an IE update + restart. So I kind of connected the two and found MS to be extremely childish to pull such a thing.

I need to remind myself of Hanlon's razor:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

Hmm..

I searched the issue a bit and found that I am not alone after all - many people have experienced the same, for example on this board:

http://www.heise.de/security/news/foren/go...forum_id=117037

Since not everyone's affected, I will still keep with the incompetence theory

[nikster]

If you have one of the MANY illegal copies of XP then beware!

When you ask for the latest updates to be installed they send something nasty to make your PC play-up!

Can't blame them I suppose........

I have a genuine XP Pro and it passes the Windows Genuine Advantage check every time. It seems to check every time too, as if my XP had suddenly gone from legit to bad, turned to the dark side... but I digress.

However, I know more than a few people where the WGA check fails even though they have a legit copy. I was able to fix it for one of them following a complicated set of steps on the Microsoft.com web page - it involved downloading DLLs, manually installing them and then registering them with the system.

So yeah I wouldn't blame them for WGA either if it targeted just pirates. The problem is, it also targets legitimate, paying users.