Sorry, I meant woes. Vista has been released under much hype and expectations and Microsoft had a very hefty campaign to get it to the mass, the "wow" being their advertising keyword. But, it has not been all that smooth for them with over a month and a half after Vista's release, it is still not on track.
Animated cursor? I am afraid of it.Those who have been closely watching the Microsoft the earlier versions of Windows, this might not a new issue. Right from Windows 98 through Windows XP SP2. this issue has haunted the software giant. Buffer overflow can be caused by a simple, malfunctioning .ANI file, putting the system in a crash-restart-crash loop. This was partially fixed in Windows XP SP1, but this recurred in SP2 and now in Vista too. This is simply ordinary stuff from Microsoft.
Security engineers at McAfee's Avert Labs confirmed today - and posted the video to prove this. When the system detects a crash because of the faulted cursor, it tries to save the vital system information before restarting, one of the new features of Vista, but this causing system to keep trying to load Windows Explorer each time and fail. The only remedy being to switch the power off. Many hacker circles are already exploiting the flaw to jeopardize Vista systems.
It seems Microsoft is not ready to take the embarassment, they announced last week that they would release the patch sooner, than the earlier announced date of April 10. "Since testing has been completed earlier than anticipated, Microsoft has released the update ahead of schedule to help protect customers", a Microsoft representative said in an e-mail. Customers can manually download the patch, or if the Automatic Update feature is turned on, it would be automatically patched.
Lately news have rolled out that the patch has been more of a thorn for many users as it is having conficts with the audio and networking drivers. Many lost all their ethernet and audio functions once they installed the patch, and regained as they removed the update and used the system restore. The funniest part is that Microsoft admitted they knew this Realtek driver issue. They had released a support article about that and later another patch for this, along with the cursor patch.
Avert Labs video
Microsoft Advisory
Lawsuit over low-end Vista
The "Vista Capable" sticker has proved to be costly for Microsoft, a Washington State woman has filed a class action action suit against Microsoft, complaining about this. Her system would not run the full version of Vista (read Ultimate) despite of her system having the sticker.
Her lawyers argue that Vista Basic lacks many features showcased in Microsoft's marketing campaign, the company has fooled the customers. This might not be a big case that would bring Microsoft to bankruptcy, but still this has scarred their reputation.
Microsft Vista campaign
The lawsuit
technorati tags:Vista, lawsuit, cursor, patch, bugs, Microsoft, Windows
