Microsoft's latest Win XP Blue Screen of Meh

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 15 February 2010 11:05

Your IT - Home IT

Here we go again, the world's largest software company has released a patch that, in conjunction with its malware removal tool, is unable to detect systems with malware, or is suffering other problems that cause Windows XP machines to crash, crash and crash again - with a fix that requires you to find your XP installation CD!

Billions of dollars in profit, decades of programming experience, billions of installations in place - and Microsoft still manages to put out patches and updates that give some of its users a BSOD or 'blue screen of death' in an endless loop with a fix that's tricky for the average user to implement.

The latest security fix to be fingered for this foul-up is being claimed as MS10-015 and KB977165 in online reports, which is meant to be fixing a 17-year old 'kernel bug' in thr 32-bit version of Windows XP, something that achieved prominence when Google claimed to have suffered hack attacks due to this bug.

The fact that an obviously serious bug could exist for a whopping 17 years, not only does the age of the bug make some of Adobe's unpatched Flash bugs look like they were discovered yesterday in company, but it also begs the question as to exactly what Microsoft's many engineers and software developers are doing when it comes to quality control and testing, or if they are just sitting around, smoking something funny and enjoying picnics on Microsoft's campus grounds.

After all, the malware epidemic that is the bane of Windows users is hardly a secret. Doesn't Microsoft have swathes of machines, virtual and otherwise, ready to test the latest updates and patches before sending them out to the public?

Doesn't Microsoft have malware loaded onto these machines which could trip up updates, and trip up users that have failed to be protected from such malware, first by Microsoft itself thanks to its blimmin' buggy operating system software, and then by security companies whose products don't seem to be able to protect anything half the freaking time, given the ongoing malware mayhem?

Endless reboots are no fun for the user, average or otherwise, and definitely no fun for system administrators who find themselves reminded time and again they their powers only go so far against Microsoft's bug-patching kryptonite.

So is there a fix?! Please read on to page two to discover more gory details of the maddening mayhem that is Microsoft's meh!