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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Guess who decides what is
"Troublesome"</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Dumps uploaded to Microsoft for
analysis?...</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Windows XP includes its own BlackIce or Zonealarm
like firewall...</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Embrace, extend, extinguish.</FONT></DIV>
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<TD bgColor=#006666 vAlign=top><IMG align=top alt="" height=16
src="http://images.slashdot.org/slc.gif" width=13><FONT color=#ffffff
face=arial,helvetica size=4><B>Windows XP To Block Use Of "Troublesome"
Drivers</B></FONT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><A
href="http://slashdot.org/search.pl?topic=microsoft"><IMG align=right
alt=Microsoft border=0 height=55 hspace=20
src="http://images.slashdot.org/topics/topicms.gif" vspace=10 width=75>
</A><B>Posted by <A href="http://www.monkey.org/~timothy">timothy</A> on 06:58
AM August 4th, 2001</B><BR><FONT size=2><B>from the don't-worry-ma
dept.</B></FONT><BR><A href="mailto:john_sinc@yahoo.com">Johnno74</A> writes
<I>"According to this <A
href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/20805.html">story on The
Register</A>, 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 <A
href="http://www.zonelabs.com/">ZoneAlarm</A> and <A
href="http://www.networkice.com/">BlackIce</A>... 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 <A
href="http://www.microsoft.com/ddk/wds/docs/Windows_Update_Driver_Block.doc">this</A>
1mb word document on <A href="http://www.microsoft.com/">Microsoft's</A>
site.</I> <BR>
<P><I>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: <BR><BR> "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."
<P>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."</I>
<P>Note: according to this article, the change does <I>not</I> prevent Black Ice
or other programs from running per se -- but it does require them to use updated
versions tailored for XP. </P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>