Microsoft repairs PCs crippled by XP SP3 update

June 29, 2008 – 11:39 AM

Nearly three weeks after security vendor Symantec released a free tool to clean up PCs crippled by the Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) update, Microsoft issued a fix that should reestablish lost Internet and wireless connections.

Earlier this week, Microsoft posted a hotfix for a problem users first reported in mid-May. Users of Symantec’s consumer security software said that after updating their PCs to XP SP3, a bug emptied Windows’ Device Driver and deleted network connections.

Although Symantec initially blamed Microsoft for the snafu, it later accepted some responsibility. In late May, Symantec acknowledged that Microsoft’s updating process and a security feature in its own Norton-branded software combined to swamp the Windows registry with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of bogus and corrupted keys. That security feature, dubbed “SymProtect” by Symantec, was designed to protect the company’s security software from attack by guarding against unauthorized changes to the registry.

Although Microsoft had previously declined to comment on the episode, the support document that accompanied the hotfix fingered Symantec’s software. “This problem occurs when the Fixccs.exe process is called during the Windows XP SP3 installation,” said Microsoft. “This process creates some intermediate registry subkeys, and it later deletes these subkeys. In some cases, some anti-virus applications may not let the Fixccs.exe process delete these intermediate registry subkeys.”

Microsoft repairs PCs crippled by XP SP3 update – Network World