Hey everyone, Mike Reavey here. Wanted to drop everyone a note that yes we are aware of some of the information floating around about problems after installing the MS05-051 update on Windows 2000 systems. We’ve investigated this and here’s what we have found. In cases where the default permissions on the COM+ catalog directory and files have been changed from the default settings, various problems might occur after applying the MS05-051 update (such as The Windows Installer service may not start or the Windows Firewall Service may not start or the Network Connections folder is empty).
We’ve looked into this and published a KB article (909444) with guidance on how to get MS05-051 on systems without running into these problems. We’ve also updated the security bulletin to let people know as well.
This situation is fairly limited in the number of customers who have reported it, but we wanted to make sure people were aware we had guidance on it.
We’re still keeping an eye out for public exploit code for MS05-051 and have not seen any as yet. We’ll be watching through the weekend so if anything changes that you need to know about we’ll update you.
-Mike
*This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights.*