Microsoft swats critical bugs

Microsoft has pushed out a patch for a software bug responsible for crashing some Windows systems that had third-party antivirus and firewalls installed.

The fix, which was sent out through the automatic Windows Update system this week, deals with a problem that only affects Windows XP computers with Service Pack 2 installed alongside Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 and Windows Server 2003. The bug causes those PCs to crash and display the “blue screen of death” and an error message.

Microsoft released a patch to customers who had encountered the problem in November, after the Windows Error Reporting team noticed an increase in specific failure reports, the company said in a statement. The company then felt that the issue was widespread enough and felt confident enough in the downloadable fix to distribute it en masse through its Windows Update system.

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