Name: chT40241 Date: 03/25/99


It seems that the install script installs msvcrt.dll into the Windows system directories based on date and time check only and not on version checking (there are other bugs that have been fixed similar to this with Java 2; see 4185324 and 4203153).

Specifically, the msvcrt.dll that is installed has a version number of 4.20.6164 and a file date of 11/11/98. If I look at the expanded install directory for the plug-in it seems that most of the files have a date of either 12/07/98 or 11/11/98. I suspect that a directory was created for the installation process and files were copied into that directory without preserving date and time stamps. If I look at recent interim releases of the JDK for msvcrt.dll I see the same kind of pattern; the file versions and sizes are the same but the dates have been changed. Version 4 of the msvcrt.dll file is much older than late 1998.

What this means is that anyone who has a version of Visual C++ Version 5 or 6 on their system, or some application that requires msvcrt.dll (which is many), when they install the Java Plug-in they are moved back to an old version of msvcrt.dll. On my particular machine I was lucky because I have installed SP2 of Visual Studio 97 and in that version, msvcrt.dll has a date of 01/05/99 and a version number of 6.00.8337. But in the next 5 offices where they just had VC++ Version 5, they now have Version 4 of the dll. They noticed it when applications they were building started to fail and they tracked it down to new entry points.

I've looked at the latest version of the Java Plug-in source on the licensee website very quickly to see if all the setup files for Install Shield were there so I could fix the problem and provide our users with a corrected copy. All the required pieces do not seem to be there and even if they were that would not help anyone who downloads the plug-in directly from the JavaSoft site.

(Review ID: 56087)

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