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| You just spat on: Home > News | 4th December |
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Millions fall victim to "dangerous" Y2K4 bug in Windows XP 1 Jan 2004 Millions of users of Microsoft's latest operating system have fallen victim to a previously-undiscovered bug, it emerged today. The Y2K4 bug, which is present in some distributions of Windows XP, struck computers at midnight last night when the year was supposed to automatically change to 2004. Instead, affected computers present a series of symptoms which render the systems useless and, in some cases, dangerous. "First of all the hard drive starts making a grating noise, then read/write error messages appear on the screen, followed by three general protection faults," said computer expert Doug Ramsbottom, who has fallen victim to the bug. "Then after Windows XP has finished booting as normal, a hundred message boxes appear on the screen informing the user that there is a problem with the computer's date setting." "Once you click through all of them, the clock begins running backwards at the rate of 14 hours per second; possibly faster. XP won't let you change it and disables the mouse and keyboard," he continued. "When the clock reaches 12pm on 31st January 49BC, Windows Messenger pops up, starts logging in and then the computer reboots. The process is repeated no matter how many times you go through this." Most worryingly, however, DeadBrain has discovered that in some instances the computer power supply's fan is caused to run backwards, drawing hot air into the computer. In two cases in Wales this resulted in the computer overheating and a small fire starting in the CD-ROM drive. DeadBrain spoke by phone to a Microsoft spokesman who denied that such a problem exists. However, a Microsoft insider confirmed to DeadBrain that the problem is real. "It affected some of the first distributions of Windows XP, mostly those sold in Europe within the first month of it going on sale," she said. "After that someone found out about the fault and corrected it, but it would seem that no attempt was made to contact users with the faulty editions." The source went on to warn users who suspect they may have the faulty editions of Windows XP not to use their computers and seek expert advice. When asked how such a major bug could have got into a publicly-available release of a major operating system such as Windows XP, our source said such an error was unprecedented and "extremely worrying". "I've never known a bug like this to get through all of our testing," she said. "I think it must have been deliberately planted by someone on the development team. I think we're looking at sabotage here." Police in Redmond are looking for an escaped penguin wearing a bowtie, but it is not thought that the two incidents are connected.
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