When Microsoft announced the availability of Windows XP Service Pack 2 last week, you may have breathed a sigh of relief to know that your business’ security concerns were being addressed. However, you may be breathing a sigh of frustation as you discover some of your applications may not work.
To help smooth the transition, Microsoft released a list of dozens of third-party applications that will have problems with the default Windows firewall.
In a knowledge base article,
the software giant said an explicit setting in the Windows
firewall to block unsolicited connections will cause disruptions on FTP
programs, peer-to-peer applications and software for multimedia streaming
and e-mail applications.
Microsoft has spent the last few months warning that the security-centric
service pack will break and disrupt
existing applications, especially those that depend on open ports
for connectivity.
The list includes Microsoft’s own Visual Studio .NET and SQL
products, as well as anti-virus software from Symantec,
the ColdFusion MX Server from Macromedia and security
products from Computer Associates and McAfee.
The XP SP2 disruptions will also affect certain multi-player games that
rely on instant messaging connectivity. Games sold by the likes of
Atari, EA Games and ActiVision were affected, Microsoft said.
As previously reported,
Microsoft has released update patches to allow its own
flagship customer relationship management (CRM 1.2) software to work properly on systems running SP2.
The company has also urged Web developers and Web site owners to closely
examine the XP changes and make the necessary code modifications to minimize
disruptions. Microsoft released a detailed document
titled “How to Make Your Web Site Work with Windows XP Service
Pack 2” to spell out the code tweaks needed to deal with SP2.
Article adapted from Internetnews.com
| Do you have a comment or question about this article or other small business topics in general? Speak out in the SmallBusinessComputing.com Forums. Join the discussion today! |