The day before the worldwide launch of Windows 2000, Microsoft announced a critical update for Windows 2000. It is not too surprising that this patch was released so soon -- Windows 2000 had been at the duplicators for two months prior to its February release. This was plenty of time to fix bugs before the wider community starts tearing into the new OS.

Microsoft advises that the patch is a critical update û- that is, everyone should apply it. You can download the patch from www.microsoft.com/windows2000/downloads or from our cover CD. This update addresses three key areas.

1. Year is reported incorrectly on a non-Gregorian calendar

If you are using the Wareki or Taiwanese date calendar, then a VBScripting problem will cause incorrect years to be displayed. This problem does not occur if the system is using the more common Gregorian calendar. Microsoft, feeling a little paranoid, also notes that "this is not a Year 2000 problem, as it affects all dates".

2. Corrupted files when saving .htm to http server from Office 2000

When saving files as html (.htm) to an http server from Office 2000 programs such as Word and Excel, the data will some times get scrambled. Apparently, the bug lies with Windows 2000 and not Office 2000. Applying the patch should fix the problem.

3. Potential security issue from malicious Web surfers

This bug is a bit of a mouthful and is known as the "Malformed Hit-Highlighting Argument Security Vulnerability". The update will fix a vulnerability in Windows 2000 that could allow a malicious Web surfer to gain unauthorised access to view files if running Web services and file indexing services (see Microsoft Security Bulletin MS00-006 for further details).

By Scott Mendham