Forums / General / Online editor not working after recent Windows XP security updates

Online editor not working after recent Windows XP security updates

Author Message

Iain MacLean

Tuesday 20 April 2004 6:20:06 pm

Hi

We have just struck a problem where the online editor has stopped working on Windows XP machines. When you go to edit an article, the "Disable editor" button appears above the Intro and Body fields, but the editor has not been initialised. Clicking the button and then clicking the "Enable editor" button does not start the editor. This situation has appeared on difference machines in our development environment and in our client's office.

At least one XP machine, the one in our office, had Microsoft's KB835732, KB828741 and KB837001 security updates for XP installed on 15 April, along with the KB831167 critical update for IE6SP1. KB828741 was supposed to deal with recently-discovered vulnerabilities in RPC/DCOM. (Not sure if that is relevant?)

This problem has not appeared in IE running on Win98 - either running on Windows machines or in Win4Lin on my Mandrake machine, which have not had any MS updates installed recently. We have been able to edit the same articles using the online editor in IE6 on Win98. There is nothing in these forums or on the Microsoft site about similar problems occurring with other JavaScript apps.

We are using eZpublish 3.3-2 and OE1.3.

Has anyone else struck this in the past fortnight (that's the past two weeks for Americans :-))?

Regards

Iain

Tony Wood

Wednesday 21 April 2004 7:51:47 am

Hi Iain,

We have not found this problem on XP machines. One place to look might be the MS Office package. I notice that the OE compalins upon fist install that it needs something from the MS Office. If you ignore this it still works.

I am thinking that the MS patch may have affected a MS Office package. This could be causing the problem. Office 2000 seems not to have the problem but Office XP could be doing something weird.

tony
--
http://www.visionwt.com

Tony Wood : twitter.com/tonywood
Vision with Technology
Experts in eZ Publish consulting & development

Power to the Editor!

Free eZ Training : http://www.VisionWT.com/training
eZ Future Podcast : http://www.VisionWT.com/eZ-Future

Iain MacLean

Wednesday 21 April 2004 2:40:24 pm

Hi Tony

I think you might be right about the MS patch causing the problem - either the IE6 or Outlook patches applied recently. That could make finding the cause or a solution a bit tricky.

Thanks
Iain

Iain MacLean

Wednesday 21 April 2004 5:59:07 pm

Connected the XP machine to the server on the develoment machine (through our very basic SOHO network) and found the online editor worked on that machine. Solved the problem by reloading all the [online editor] files onto the production server. The online editor now works in WinXP. Don't know why it didn't before as none of the files had been modifed on the production server, but client is happy.

Tony Wood

Thursday 22 April 2004 2:36:08 pm

hmmmm

I am glads its working. for the problem to be fixed this way sounds like one of the following:

* a cache issue... maybe by reloading the files from dev to prodcution you changed the files and hence the browser needed to reset.
*It might also be the session cookie, maybe that is changed?

Very interesting, if you ever found out what the problem was, please let me know. Sounds fasinating.

--tony

Tony Wood : twitter.com/tonywood
Vision with Technology
Experts in eZ Publish consulting & development

Power to the Editor!

Free eZ Training : http://www.VisionWT.com/training
eZ Future Podcast : http://www.VisionWT.com/eZ-Future

Iain MacLean

Thursday 22 April 2004 4:20:52 pm

I had wondered whether it was a cache issue, but it would have had to have been specific to XP, as the editor continued working properly on Win98. I think you might be right about the effect of the upgrades on MS Office being the culprit, especially if it affected the cache in some way.

If I ever figure it out, I'll post the result.

Thanks for you help.

Iain

Graham Tillotson

Monday 12 July 2004 1:41:56 pm

FWIW, I just uninstalled ALL the XP patches on my machine to see if I could identify the source of this error, but I still get the automation error and the red X in the XML field.

I'm running Windows XP Pro SP1. I wouldn't be surprised if the patch "uninstalls" left files behind and didn't really clean my system (as Microsoft is fond of doing). The editor works fine on my machine at home (Server 2000), and that one has the same build of IE as the one on my XP machine.

DUO : CONSULTING
Web content management experts
www.duoconsulting.com