Âé¶¹´«Ã½

Technology

Windows upgrade blocks PC add-ons

By Barry Fox

2 October 2004

THE latest upgrade to Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system deliberately prevents a number of PC add-ons from working, Âé¶¹´«Ã½ has learned.

The upgrade, a massive 80-megabyte package called Service Pack 2 (SP2), was already known to cause some equipment to fail, and users had been led to believe that this was because of the strong security it contains (Âé¶¹´«Ã½, 18 September, p 4). Microsoft says that “some programs seem to stop working after you install SP2” because the upgrade’s anti-hacking firewall blocks vital drivers, the software that allows add-ons to run on a PC.

While security measures…

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