Windows XP Patch 811493 Causes System Slowdown Workaround

Published by

Thanks to Neobond at Neowin.net for sending this in. In a follow up to our post here on troubles with Q811493 patch for Windows XP y_notm has submitted to the BPN section that MS have posted a workaround on the WUv4 beta newsgroup (Windows Update v4). Rancho*: I simply advise you to *NOT* install this patch, or if you have - uninstall it. If you install the Q330909 [original article] patch instead you will get even newer versions of the affected system core files and circumvent the whole performance issue. We have already mentioned this in the release article for Q811493 by the way. I have added a file comparison screenshot for all disbelievers.

File comparison between Q330909: Hibernation Problem On Computers With 1 GB Of RAM and Q811493: Buffer Overrun in Windows Kernel Message Handling Could Lead to Elevated Privileges Q330909: 5.1.2600.1159 Q811493: 5.1.2600.1150 There you have it. You may or may not have seen an issue where after installing Q811493 the machine runs extremely slow. What we have determined so far is that it is an issue with the anti-virus on there machines. If the customer is running EZ Trust they will need to disable the file monitoring service and if they are running Norton they will need to disable the auto protect service and the installation of Q811493 and this will return to system functionality to normal. Other Anti-virus programs that seem to cause this issue that we have heard of so far:

EZ Anti-virus Realtime MacAfee version 7 Sophos

While an MS spokesperson was not immediately available for comment Neowin will attempt to confirm the above workaround, which appears to fix one security problem by compromising system security elsewhere (ie: no more auto-protect). People using the leaked SP2 update for Windows XP also reported problems after un-installing the patch which caused one of our members to re-install his system!

Neowin BPN submission