By Rose Vines

Files for this month:

Microsoft Office 97
Lotus WordPro
Hasbro and Atari
Internet Explorer

Microsoft Office 97

The complete updates

Microsoft has issued Service Release 2b (SR-2b) for Office 97. Before you rush to install it, take note that Microsoft has made a real mess of this release. 

The headaches start with the fact that this is really a demi-release that includes nothing more than an Outlook Y2k patch and the Jet 3.5 Service Pack; it doesn't contain any other recently released patches.

The really bad news is that SR-2b will not install if you've already installed SR-2a. 

Because of the confusion, we've included every Office patch on this month's cover disc. Here's what you should do:

1. Run the Office 97 Version Checker to see which version of Office you have installed. It can't distinguish between SR-2a and SR-2b, but it will let you know if you have the original version or SR-1 or any version of SR-2 installed.

2. If you have neither SR-1 nor SR-2 installed, install SR-1 and then SR-2b.

3. If you have SR-1 installed, install SR-2b.

4. If you have SR-2 installed, install the Outlook 97 or Outlook 98 Y2k patch (whichever is appropriate) plus the Jet 3.5 Service Pack 2.

5. Regardless of which version you have, you should also ensure you install the other updates that have not been included in any service release: the Word 97 Template Security Patch, the Forms 2.0 Control Security Patch, and the recently released Excel 97 Sylk patch.

Lotus WordPro

Corrupted divisions

If you use divisions in Lotus Word Pro 9.5 documents you may find your documents become corrupted. You're at greatest risk if you create or insert divisions or quick divisions at the insertion point, or if you create or insert divisions that have different page orientations or headers and footers. If this bug strikes you, you'll probably get an error message "WORDPRO caused an invalid page fault in module WORDPRO.EXE".

Fortunately, there's a fix available from Lotus and we've included it on this month's cover disc.

Hasbro and Atari

Arcade, MechWarrior, MechCommander

If your Caterpillar is running wild or your Pong is not up to scratch, you may need the Atari Arcade Hits patch. This patch will update Arcade Hits to version 1.1. You'll find it on this month's cover disc.

We've also included the 1.2 patch for MechWarrior3. This patch creates a more stable multiplayer environment and enhances several other features. Unfortunately, it's not perfect: in multiplayer games you may still find that one player is not seen by the others. The only way to fix this is to exit the session and restart.

If you play MechCommander Gold in multiplayer mode, you may have found that some players are using a cheat that lets them jump their BattleMech to anywhere on the screen. There's a patch available that will send a chat message to all players identifying the player using the cheat. It, too, is on our cover disc.

Internet Explorer

Download behavior bug

Microsoft has issued a patch for Internet Explorer 5 that fixes a security hole known as the download behavior vulnerability, also known as the IFrameExecCommand vulnerability.

IE 5 includes a feature called download behavior that allows Web page authors to download files for use in client-side scripts. The feature is supposed to restrict such downloads to files residing on the Web site's domain, but it's been found that there's a way around this. A server-side redirect can bypass the download restriction, thus allowing a Web site operator to read files on visitor's computers or intranets.

Microsoft originally issued a workaround, which had the unfortunate requirement of disabling Active Scripting. The new patch does away with this requirement and instead replaces the HTML Rendering Engine component of IE 5. We've included the patch on this month's cover disc.

If you've already implemented the workaround, once you apply the patch you can re-enable Active Scripting in IE 5 by:

1. Selecting Internet Options from the Tools menu. 

2. Clicking the Security Tab, selecting the Internet Zone and clicking on the Custom Level button.

3. Locating the Scripting heading and then enabling Active Scripting.

You can ensure that the patch has been correctly applied by opening the Help Menu in IE, choosing About Internet Explorer, and checking that the Update Versions number includes Q242542.

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