WinCIM et. al. Broken By June Patch

[fhaber]

For those Oz or TAP users who still have a CompuServe classic program installed (for account maintenance, these days), **and are on dial-up, as opposed to broadband***.....

KB911280 breaks CompuServe Classic dial-in (and probably all script-based
dial-ins). Uninstall is the workaround.

Notes to this effect are being posted in the current CIS forums. Unfortunately, those afflicted won't be able to read them.

[Jeff]

For those Oz or TAP users who still have a CompuServe classic program installed (for account maintenance, these days), **and are on dial-up, as opposed to broadband***.....

KB911280 breaks CompuServe Classic dial-in (and probably all script-based
dial-ins). Uninstall is the workaround.

Notes to this effect are being posted in the current CIS forums. Unfortunately, those afflicted won't be able to read them.

Not quite. It breaks dialup *scripts*, such as CIS.SCP, but Tap gets in just fine. Been there, fixed it, as I use dialup CIS.SCP as a backup to my broadband ISP. But it gets worse; after uninstalling it Windows Update starts demanding that the "fix" be installed as it's "Critical". Just as critical as it was on the 13th when it bit all of us.

- Jeff

[fhaber]

I must not have been clear. What's broken is Classic dial-in, *not* the hybrid login used by TAP. That's been grandfathered for years, just for us. Thanks for checking it out. Only one 98 machine here seems to work properly for dialup, and this shameful situation has NOTHING to do with the problem above.

Someone remind me what OZwin uses.

I confess; I have so little motivation to fix dialup now. When my broadband went out for four hours a week ago (first outage since the blackout), I just turned on the radio in the wireless, and used the neighbor's RoadRunner.

(New York tidbit: There are some apartment buildings here that are so mellow that families *exchange WEP and WPA keys*, and use each others' broadband freely.)

[Judy G. Russell]

In other areas it's not so much a matter of mellow as uneducated. When I was on vacation a couple of years ago, every evening there would be two or three wireless networks that would come online at the end of the workday (as people got home from work) that were totally unsecure...

[Lindsey]

KB911280 breaks CompuServe Classic dial-in (and probably all script-based dial-ins). Uninstall is the workaround.
Yeah, there's been quite a bit of conversation about that on Classic Support, as you might imagine. Thread number 43454 (http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=messages&tsn=1&tid=43454&webtag=ws-cssoftware) includes a link for monitoring the the status of the Microsoft fix.

Which reminds me; I need to be sure to tell the network people NOT to allow that patch on our Fedline PC, because that uses dial-up as a backup means of accessing the Federal Reserve EFT site.

--Lindsey

[sidney]

Someone remind me what OZwin uses

I have no way to check it out now, having neither a Windows machine with modem nor a CompuServe account to dial in with.

This should not affect OzWin use over broadband. People who use a modem for dialup access to CompuServe can either have OzWin dialup directly or use OzWin over a RAS network connection. Is it your understanding that both involve using CIS.SCP and would be broken by this?

I found out about this yesterday when I got an email from our campus IT people that the patch kills dialup access to the university modem servers. Anyone who dials in to the campus network on a Windows machine who has installed the patch is screwed.

I am so happy that I am now strictly a Mac OS and Linux user. Maybe I'll install Windows on my new Intel MacBook to run some things, but I'm in no hurry about that.

- sidney

[Lindsey]

I am so happy that I am now strictly a Mac OS and Linux user. Maybe I'll install Windows on my new Intel MacBook to run some things, but I'm in no hurry about that.
There is a truly precious series of Macintosh commercials running here now. They feature two guys, one older rather stodgy-looking guy with black-rimmed glasses and a business suit, and a younger very hip-looking guy. The older guy, of course, is the Windows guy, and the younger one is the Mac guy. The Windows guy is always getting tripped up -- not seriously tripped up, but just slightly tripped up -- by his OS, while the Mac guy just bops along without a care being totally cool. They are so funny. In one of them, the Mac guy is talking about all the cool multimedia software he has.

"Oh, we have cool software, too," says the Windows guy.

"Oh yeah?" says the Mac guy. "Like what?"

"Well," says the Windows guy. "We have a calculator."

"Oh -- OK, that's pretty cool. What else?"

"Ummm . . . a clock?"


Really, really, great ad campaign.

--Lindsey

[earler]

Ozwin uses windows, so it can connect through an already existing connection. No dial-up needed.

-er

[davidh]

I suspect that the old CID dialer with WINCIM versions 1.4 thru 2.6.1 might work if it even works on XP at all. Problem is even if it did work there is probably no old 16 bit browser that would still allow one to access Compuseve forums.

I don't know if any of the Trumpet Winsock programs are still available or not, or whether they might work on XP.

These are not very useful workarounds , even if one was tempted to call the workarounds.

DH

[fhaber]

Nothing personal, David, but it's my sysoperly duty to warn here that Trumpet was never intended for NT, and the CIM dialer stopped working some time ago. Playing around with either under XP might be quite poisonous.

[davidh]

Nothing personal, David, but it's my sysoperly duty to warn here that Trumpet was never intended for NT, and the CIM dialer stopped working some time ago. Playing around with either under XP might be quite poisonous. I know.

I just "shot myself in the foot" yesterday. I installed some 16 bit windows software to convert text files between different encodings of vietnamese text. Turned out the software did not do the conversion I wanted to do correctly so I uninstalled the software more or less by brute force since it did not have a built in uninstall program. Then my Win 98 would only boot in safe mode because vgafix.fon and vgasys.fon entries had been fixed in system.ini but not in registry and GDI.EXE would not load. Fortunately I was able to repair the registry in safe mode and did not have to reinstall windows.

To top it off, I then discovered that I already had a program installed on the PC that WOULD do the conversion correctly. I had forgotten it had that conversion feature.

DH

[Dodi Schultz]

>> What's broken is Classic dial-in....

Frank, this dinosaur is thoroughly confused. I still run TAP for e-mail, dial-up, on DOS. I also access mail on my CIS Classic account at MailToWeb (via a browser); I dial-up (with an ancient version of Win) to get there.

Both appear to be working normally.

Should I worry? Should I drop CIS instantly? Is CIS Classic going belly up? Should I go contract with another ISP instantly?

P.S.: Why are you referring to our neighborhood as Hooverville?

--Dodi

[Gary Maltzen]

Frank, this dinosaur is thoroughly confused.What the update to WinXP broke is WinXP dial-up scripting -- for example, features of dial-up scripting used in the Classic dial-up.
Microsoft has, in it's wisdom, decided that nobody really uses scripted dial-up connections any more. ("Native" PPP dial-up connections don't need scripting)

-- T. Rex

[sidney]

I dial-up (with an ancient version of Win) to get there

Then this news item doesn't apply to you. If one installs the very latest security update from Microsoft for their very latest version of Windows, which is Windows XP SP2, then that system can no longer use the CompuServe dialup script to connect by modem. But you aren't running that version of Windows.

-- sidney

[Dodi Schultz]

Then this news item doesn't apply to you. If one installs the very latest security update from Microsoft for their very latest version of Windows, which is Windows XP SP2, then that system can no longer use the CompuServe dialup script to connect by modem. But you aren't running that version of Windows.

-- sidney

Thanks, Sidney. So there's no impact on dial-up generally for Classic CompuServe customers? And this isn't a threat to the existence of Classic CompuServe, as I feared?

--Dodi (who didn't even own a computer till 20 years ago and then only when I was assured it was really SuperTypewriter)

[sidney]

So there's no impact on dial-up generally for Classic CompuServe customers? And this isn't a threat to the existence of Classic CompuServe, as I feared?

That's right. The impact is limited to people with an up to date XP system who use a modem for dialup access, and not just for CompuServe. For example, it affects some people at my university who dial in to the campus network from home, and I know at least one other university in the same situation.

That should be enough people affected to ensure that Microsoft will issue a correction or information on a workaround soon, but it has no impact on people who have broadband access to the Internet.

So I don't think that it is anywhere near a threat to Classic CompuServe.

-- sidney

[Dodi Schultz]

Thank you, Sidney!

< Whew! >

--Dodi

[Lindsey]

KB911280 breaks CompuServe Classic dial-in (and probably all script-based dial-ins). Uninstall is the workaround.
There's now a fix available for this. See this thread (http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=messages&tsn=1&tid=43504&webtag=ws-cssoftware) in the Classic CompuServe Support Forum.

--Lindsey

[fhaber]

And there's some controversy over whether you have to manually uninstall the old 911280, reboot, and then install the new.

There seems to be doubt that you have to do the uninstall if you want Automatic Updates to do the, uh, update for you. It will NOT be automatically replaced if you have the early-June version.

There are further complications if you're an admin, and use SUS/servers to do this stuff. I'll spare you these, lest your eyes, ears and donuts all glaze over.

Yes, I think Microsoft is losing it. Cases in point: the quality of Windows Live programs, Defender, etc. Delays. The bad will generated by the WGA flap, and the threat of deactivations. Etc.

[Peter Creasey]

And there's some controversy over whether you have to manually uninstall the old 911280, reboot, and then install the new.

F, My understanding is there is NO controversy. You must uninstall the old update, reboot, then make sure you install the new one (dated 6/27, I believe).

[Jeff]

And there's some controversy over whether you have to manually uninstall the old 911280, reboot, and then install the new.


I donno. Not wishing to wait for the molasses in Redmond I had already manually uninstalled it to get my dialup back. Now I'm in a fight with the damned WGA notification spyware. I had my firewall blocking the original from phoning home, and now I have it blocking the update from phoning home. Neither can be uninstalled...

[Gary Maltzen]

And there's some controversy over whether you have to manually uninstall the old 911280, reboot, and then install the new.Although you *might* get away with no uninstall, the safer and more guaranteed measure is to un-install the errant fix then install the corrected fix.

[Peter Creasey]

WGA notification spyware. I had my firewall blocking the original from phoning home, and now I have it blocking the update from phoning home. Neither can be uninstalled...

Jeff, Thankfully, I always let Win updates "mellow" before installing them; thus, I was able to learn about the problems with the dial-scripting update and WGA update and avoid having to try to uninstall them.

I don't plan to install the WGA update until it is absolutely mandatory. It is a bear to uninstall.

On the WGA update, you may want to stop your firewall from checking outgoing transmissions. Other than the dubious benefit of advising you of what's going out, most people think this is a big waste.

[Mike]

FWIW, mine got replaced with no problem. <shrug>