Starting with vista b5456 you can no longer join the multicast group 239.255.255.255. This is a regression ( of the windows vista platform ) from b5384. This multicast address seems to be the only one giving problems.

Here is a simple testcase that demonstrates the problem:

-------- begin code --------
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;

public class TestMulticastJoin
{
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            InetAddress sin = InetAddress.getByName("239.255.255.255");
            MulticastSocket soc = new MulticastSocket();
            soc.joinGroup(sin);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.out.println(e);
        }
    }
}
-------- end code --------

On b5456 you get
  "java.net.SocketException: error setting options"

On the most recent previous build b5384 this test simply completes and does not print any error message.

I have attached a native test (MulticastJoinBug.c) that demonstrates the problem without java. THIS IS NOT A JAVA ISSUE.
This bug is causing the following jck test to fail:
  
  api/java_net/Multicast/descriptions.html#joinGroup

  STATUS:Failed.test cases: 7; passed: 6; failed: 1; first test case failure:
    MulticastSocket1004