Name: joT67522 Date: 01/21/98


I recently released a product on CD-ROM that uses Sun's JRE 1.1.5.
We switched from 1.1.4 very close to the end of development because
it fixed a dialog-box related crash.

OK, so tens of thousands of CDs were pressed, and they're in customers'
hands. Now I find out to my chagrin that 1.1.5 gives the user the option
to replace the users' Winsock with the new Microsoft Winsock 2.0.
They did this to fix bug # 4069782
( http://developer.javasoft.com/developer/bugParade/bugs/4069782.html ),
a noble idea. The hitch is-
Microsoft Front Page no longer works when you do that!
This ticked off a journalist who reports on products like mine and uses
Front Page to author his articles. In other words, the people who get
hurt by this bug include those who can do the most damage to my reputation :-(

Other people have run into this problem. Querying DejaNews for Winsock
and 1.1.5 turns up six hits:
http://search.dejanews.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=1.1.5+winsock

Now, there is an uninstall- of sorts- for Winsock2, but it's a batch
file buried in c:\windows\ws2bakup, and it won't run properly while
winsock is active, so I tell users to run it once in MS-DOS mode, run
it again in Win95 mode, then reboot. Yuk.

Who decided that Winsock 2 was ready for prime time
(i.e. in the JRE install)? ENDUSERS install JRE! ENDUSERS won't know
how to deal with the problems that Winsock 2 causes!
I sincerely hope that JRE 1.1.6 doesn't cause the Winsock compatibility
problems that JRE 1.1.5 does!

One possible fix, for me, would be to have the JRE installer accept
commandline or environment variable hints such as "install here",
"silent install", and "for god's sake, don't replace the winsock".
If JRE 1.1.6 had those features, I'd be a very happy camper.

Dan Kegel
Activision
(Review ID: 23053)
======================================================================