Microsoft patches trip up Windows Media Player
- — 10 March, 2006 10:24
Three Microsoft security patches recently released may cause performance problems for Windows Media Player users, according to a company advisory.
Users who have applied the patches may experience problems when seeking, rewinding or fast-forwarding files, said the advisory. For example, files may return to the start position or freeze up.
One of the patches at issue is a critical fix released by Microsoft last month, MS06-005 (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS06-005.mspx), for a vulnerability in the way Windows Media Player processes bitmap files. The process could allow remote code execution.
The other two updates, released in October of last year, are a fix to enable Microsoft DirectX Video Acceleration of video content (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888656/) for video cards used in certain drivers and an Update Rollup 2 for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/900325/) that addresses several stability and performance issues.
As possible work-arounds, Microsoft suggests that Windows Server 2003 SP1 users disable the Advanced Fast Start feature on the publishing point and make sure that the server-side playlist does not use the "clipBegin" element. Information about the problems has been posted on a Microsoft Web site (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912226/en-us).
