Don't Click!

What did you just do!?

You just clicked on a link that said 'Don't Click!'. I guess that says something about human psychology, and it puts me in mind of a certain episode of Father Ted ("Don't press that red button, Dougal.").

This section of my site used to have a link which, when clicked would crash a Windows 9x machine - it doesn't anymore, since I've seen the error of my ways (and upset a mate who was 90% through a download when I crashed his PC).

So, about that link...?

It was just a hyperlink to 'file://c:/con/con'. A bug in Windows means that a path containing 2 or more instances of a DOS device name, like 'con', will bring the system down. An immediate blue screen is followed by a complete lock-up within a minute or so. My version of the sting was relatively benign (i.e. it took a user through several warnings before doing anything bad), but the very same bug could be exploited in at least one way to crash a user's PC without any warning (the <meta http-equiv="refresh"> tag springs to mind).

My reasons for creating this page were not to try and crash as many PCs as possible, but rather to bring the bug to people's attention. Most people I talk to still haven't heard of the con/con bug, and Microsoft don't seem to be doing a lot to inform their users, other than their 'Windows Update' feature. I, along with a lot of other people, simply don't trust Windows Update to fix as many problems as it will introduce, so I rarely use it.

The patch

If you want to protect yourself against this bug, the official patch is available at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?releaseID=3D19491
(for Windows 95 users)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?ReleaseID=3D19389
(for Windows 98 users)

Do I need it?

For a simple test to determine whether you need it, do this:

1) SAVE ANYTHING IMPORTANT YOU MAY BE WORKING ON AND CLOSE ALL PROGRAMS.
2) Select Start -> Run
3) Type "c:\con\con" into the box.
4) Retire to a safe distance.

If you get an 'invalid path' error, then you're safe. Otherwise, you'll get a blue screen, and have to restart your computer. (I did warn you ;-) )