KB908531

I’m not certain why, but I have been leaving the Microsoft Windows and Program Updates on automatic. When I woke up on the morning of April 15th I noticed that my system had rebooted. We had just had a storm, and I assumed that we had a power outage—but then there was the infamous questions “Do You Want Thunderbird to be your email client” and “Do You Want Firefox to be your browser.” Microsoft was at play again.

I use Excel extensively and restarted Excel and attempted to save a sheet as a webpage and Excel hung. Tried to open a different spreadsheet and Excel hung. Tried “Save As” and Excel hung. Well this was a very interesting problem, I then proceeded to work my way through all my Office 2003 applications: Word, OneNote, PowerPoint, Visio, Access, and Outlook; all with the same “hanging” problems. No other applications (all non-Microsoft) had the “hanging” problem. The Microstench was getting strong. It was still April 15th and there seemed to be no new reports on the web of “hanging” problems with Excel. Could it be my system?

April 16th, the web begins to buzz with a problem with security patch KB908531, part of the April 15th patch release. I went with the deinstall solution and all the Office 2003 applications work as before. I also removed all the other April 15th patches and turned off automatic updates (really no reason to use, because I use Firefox/Opera/Thunderbird exclusively).

Why the post? Because it brings home the fact that only Microsoft with its convoluted, entwined and bloated product lines would release a patch to fix security problems with its operating system and at the same time cause fundamental problems with its office suite. Microsoft is its own worse enemy and brought to mind again this excellent review of Mac OS X and the first of its three basic principles: “the system is separate from everything else.” When you think about how easy it is to install applications on the Mac or non-Microsoft applications on Windows and compare that with the profound difficulties associated with any attempt to separate the Office suite applications from Windows—you begin to appreciate the wisdom of keeping applications and system separate (principle #1).

I beleive you can also see Microsoft’s coming demise (more likely fundamental changes) with the proliferation and sophistication of web applications (Google Calendar this week, a very good example of the robustness of AJAX applications).

KB908531, a great example of what’s wrong with Microsoft—as we wait for Vista?

Update: Microsoft’s version of the problem—here.