IE Crippled By Update

Microsoft is investigating a security update released last week that has crippled Internet Explorer and prevented users from surfing the Web.

Microsoft Update Cripples IE
Microsoft has confirmed that it is investigating reports regarding a security update for Internet Explorer issued last week, crippling some users' ability to get on the web with the said browser.

Users started posting messages on forums and Microsoft support newsgroup after Microsoft released the MS07-069 Security Bulletin on December 11. Most of them are saying that they could not use Internet Explorer to connect to the internet, either because Internet Explorer refused to launch, or because when it did open, it could not open various websites.

"About 60% of the time, I would get an 'Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and must close' dialog," reported Bill Drake on the Windows Update newsgroup. Others echoed those comments on IE-specific forums, noting that both IE6 and IE7 balked at loading, or while loading, some pages, particularly home pages, on both Windows XP and Windows Vista machines.

Harold Decker, operations manager at San Diego-based Gold Peak IndustriesNA Inc., started fielding calls from users last Wednesday morning as soon as people hit the office. "I stopped everyone who hadn't installed the update from installing it, after four PCs out of 14 had the problem," said Decker, who manages a total of 35 Windows XP SP2 machines. "We're a pretty plain shop; all our systems run Windows XP SP2 and IE6," said Decker. "But some kept crashing. It seemed limited to the window that was opened, and changing the home page to something simple, like a blank page, gave a better success rate."

Microsoft said it is currently creating a patch. "Our customer service and support teams are investigating public claims of a deployment issue with Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-069," Microsoft's Mark Miller, director of security response. "If necessary, Microsoft will update the Knowledge Base article associated with MS07-069 with detailed guidance on how to prevent or address these deployment issues," Miller added.

Other users on the support forums weren't much help, except to suggest uninstalling last Tuesday's security update. That's what Decker did. "We uninstalled [MS07-069] and have had no problems since then," he said.