Microsoft Fixes Vexing XP SP2 Incompatibility

By Mary Jo Foley
Microsoft has issued a fix for one of the most cantankerous Service
Pack 2 problems caused by T.V. Media.

Numerous applications, including some of Microsoft's own, have
encountered compatibility problems with Windows XP Service Pack 2
(SP2). But one application in particular wreaked an inordinate amount
of havoc until Microsoft created a removal tool, and now, a patch, for
it.

That application ¡X which many industry watchers consider to fall more
into the adware/spware category ¡X was Total Velocity Software's T.V.
Media. TV Media hides on users' PCs and displays commercials.

ADVERTISEMENT
[EXT]

A number of users with TV Media lurking on their PCs who attempted to
load SP2 were hit immediately with the dreaded blue screen of death.

Microsoft posted a Knowledge Base article to its Web site in September
that outlined the T.V. Media-SP2 problems. Microsoft posted a
downloadable T.V. Media removal tool around the same time.

On October 5, the company posted a patch that it characterized as a
"critical update," that is designed to head-off the T.V. Media problem
at the pass.

The T.V. Media problems were not discovered during SP2 beta testing,
said Matt Fingerhut, PSS senior director of consumer technical
support. But once Microsoft began rolling out the final SP2 version,
T.V. Media, in particular, and spyware, in general, started botching
SP2 installations. Microsoft began advising customers a few weeks ago
to scan for and remove all spyware from their PCs before attempting to
install SP2.

While Fingerhut declined to discuss SP2 help-call statistics, he did
mention that users with SP2-T.V. Media compatibility problems were
typically logging two-hour-long help calls with PSS.



What's New in Embedded XP SP2?
Microsoft Changes Its Tune on Porting SP2 Fixes
What Should Microsoft Do, Post SP2?
Microsoft Sets a New Deadline for XP Service Pack 2
CERT Recommends XP SP2

To PSS' credit, the T.V. Media problem was fixed fairly quickly ¡V
about a month after Microsoft began delivering SP2 to customers using
Automatic Update/Windows Update. But there was definitely some serious
customer pain around the T.V. Media problem in August.

Late last week, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said that Microsoft is
committed to helping develop software that will help combat spyware.

(This is an edited version of an article which appeared in the
September 30, 2004, issue of the Microsoft Watch newsletter. Want to
see what other Microsoft news nuggets you might have missed? Sign up
today for a free two-week trial subscription to Microsoft Watch.)
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/arti...X1K0000535