The finger-pointing is getting ugly. Gregg Keizer reports:
Symantec Corp. Thursday said it was Microsoft’s code that crippled
some PCs after upgrades to Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) emptied
Device Manager, deleted network connections, and packed the registry
with thousands of bogus entries.
“We finally got to the bottom of this last night,” said Dave Cole,
Symantec’s senior director for product management of its consumer
software. “All of these problems are related to the same thing, a
Microsoft file that created all the garbage entries [in the registry].”
He also said that some of the same symptoms had been acknowledged by
Microsoft when users updated to Windows XP SP2 several years ago; Cole
referenced a pair of Microsoft support documents to back up his claim.
Two weeks ago, after Microsoft launched Windows XP SP3 on Windows
Update, users started reporting that their network cards and previously
crafted connections had mysteriously vanished from Windows after
updating with the service pack. The Device Manager had been emptied,
they said, and Windows’ registry, a directory that stores settings and
other critical information, had been packed with large numbers of bogus
entries.
Most users who posted messages on Microsoft’s XP SP3 support forum
said that the errant registry keys — which started with characters such
as “$%&” and appeared corrupted at first glance — were located in
sections devoted to settings for Symantec products. Not surprisingly,
they quickly pinned blame on the security company.
Earlier this week, Symantec denied that its software was at fault, and instead pointed a finger at Microsoft.
Thursday, Cole said Symantec engineers had connected the current
problem to a Microsoft file named “fixccs.exe.” According to
information on the Web, fixccs.exe stands for “Fix CCS MaxSubkeyName
mismatch,” and appears to be part of both XP SP3’s and SP2’s update
packages.
Cole wasn’t sure exactly what function fixccs.exe served. “But it
caused similar problems with the Device Manager after SP2. It looks
like it’s reared its head again.”
Two Microsoft support documents — KB893249 and KB914450 — both
describe a problem remarkably similar to what users have reported
recently. “After you install Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) on a
Windows XP-based computer, the Device Manager window is blank or some
devices no longer appear,” reads KB893249.
The fixccs.exe file attempts to make changes to the registry, said
Cole, but in some cases also adds large numbers of unnecessary keys.
When asked why so many users had reported seeing the errant entries in
sections reserved for Symantec products, Cole called it “the luck of
the draw. We have a fair number of keys in the registry, and we’re on a
lot of systems. This is not exclusive to Symantec.”
Others have noted that too. A user identified as MRFREEZE61, who
posted the first message on the Microsoft support forum thread two
weeks ago, and later came up with a workaround, said as much today.
“The reported problems are not just limited to those using Symantec
products,” wrote MRFREEZE61 in a comment added to the original
Computerworld story. “Folks on the forum report this specific registry
corruption with no Symantec products installed at all. Some find this
corruption in device control set enumerators associated with UPNP
(Universal Plug and Play) and other ‘legacy devices,’ others from users
of Avast [Antivirus].”
Fixccs.exe has also been linked to problems some users had
installing early builds of XP SP3 late last year. In a support forum
thread that started Dec. 22, 2007, Shashank Bansal, a Microsoft
engineer helping users troubleshoot XP SP3 installation bugs, said:
“This is a serious problem for us and we would like to investigate it
to further depths. We would need help from all users on this forum for
the same.” Bansal then asked users who had had trouble updating from XP
SP2 to SP3 to identify the process that had hung or had hogged CPU
cycles. “Look out for cscipt.exe or fixccs.exe,” he asked.
On Thursday, Cole said Symantec was working on a standalone tool
that would delete the extraneous registry entries. “We hope to have it
ready pretty quickly,” he said. “We’re working with Microsoft in the
normal channels.”
That word must not have trickled down to Microsoft’s technical
support representatives. Users who have posted to Symantec’s support
forum and others who have e-mailed Computerworld claim that they have
been told by Microsoft support that the fault is all or partially
Symantec’s.
A user going by “ZLevee” copied messages received from Microsoft
support to a Thursday post on the Symantec support site. “Based on the
current research, the issue can probably be caused by the conflicts
between SP3 and Norton. Please let me know if you have any Norton
product installed.,” ZLevee said the Microsoft support representative
had claimed.
A Computerworld reader e-mailed an account of his experience last
week with Microsoft’s support. “I had an online chat with a tech
support person named ‘Obaid’ on 5/18,” said Thom Nielsen in the e-mail.
“He told me that Symantec products do NOT work with XP SP3. He told me
Symantec is aware of the problem(s) & is working on it.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of this,” said Cole when asked to comment. “I hope we can clear up any confusion.”
When asked earlier Thursday whether it had uncovered any more
information about the disappearing Device Manager and the corrupted
registry entries, Microsoft said it nothing new to add beyond the
recommendation it made Tuesday: that users contact the company’s
technical support desk if they have had problems upgrading to XP SP3.
Microsoft was not available for comment Thursday night.