Microsoft released two new critical updates for Windows XP/2003.
MS03-040, the October, 2003 Cumulative Patch for Internet Explorer points to this download site. It’s about a 2MB download for 32-bit Windows systems. It appears this is intended to address some of the ActiveX issues that’ve been plaguing us all in recent weeks/months but it doesn’t actually come out and say that’s what it does. I’ll continue to follow the newsletters and post something here when I’ve got a definitive answer.
BTW, this update will cause HTML-based help to cease to function until/unless you’ve installed the newer HTML Help control from MS KB 811630.
They’ve also released another critical update to Windows Media Player 828026 – Update for Windows Media Player Script Commands. The article lists registry entries that affect how WMP interprets data embedded in the played datastream. The KB article says it applies only to WMP 6.4, 7.1 and 9 but Microsoft’s security bulletin says it also applies to WMP8, the version originally shipped with XP. Anyway, the article points to this download site which has about a 3MB download for WMP 9.