Windows XP to Block Use Of "Troublesome" Drivers

[Warren Togami]

Guess who decides what is "Troublesome"
Dumps uploaded to Microsoft for analysis?...

Windows XP includes its own BlackIce or Zonealarm like firewall...
Embrace, extend, extinguish.

      Windows XP To Block Use Of "Troublesome" Drivers 
 Posted by timothy on 06:58 AM August 4th, 2001
from the don't-worry-ma dept.
Johnno74 writes "According to this story on The Register, Windows XP rc2 now includes the ability for Microsoft to prevent users from installing certain device drivers. Sounds like a good idea? Well, apparently among the casualties are ZoneAlarm and BlackIce... Two popular free personal firewall products for windows. Guess What? XP includes its own firewall ... So you don't really need then anyway, right? The full details on how this works are in this 1mb word document on Microsoft's site. 

The document details how XP will automatically download the latest drivers for your hardware from the windows update site, and more worringly, XP will reguarly update the list of blocked drivers from the site. Quote from the document: 

   "On a related note, Windows XP provides the ability for Microsoft to receive crash dump data on specific drivers (i.e. when a user receives a blue screen, we upload that information for further analysis). When Microsoft reporting systems indicate crashes have exceeded a certain threshold, Microsoft will notify the Vendor that the device is being considered for the blocked driver list. If reports pass an even greater threshold, we will then flag that specific version of the driver as needing to be blocked." 

Boy, The site that uploads that crash dump data (and whatever else it snags...) better have a lot of bandwidth... ;-) As The Register points out, this brings back memories of how Microsoft killed Caldera DR-DOS by deliberately crashing Windows 3.1 if you were running on DR-DOS -- for no reason other than forcing you to use MS-DOS." 

Note: according to this article, the change does not prevent Black Ice or other programs from running per se -- but it does require them to use updated versions tailored for XP. 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.freesoftwarehawaii.org/pipermail/luau-freesoftwarehawaii.org/attachments/20010804/329ac313/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 139 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.freesoftwarehawaii.org/pipermail/luau-freesoftwarehawaii.org/attachments/20010804/329ac313/attachment-0002.gif>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 1425 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.freesoftwarehawaii.org/pipermail/luau-freesoftwarehawaii.org/attachments/20010804/329ac313/attachment-0003.gif>