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Windows 98 Customer Service Pack (Outlook Express 5)

The Windows 98 Customer Service Pack includes bug fixes for Windows 98 as well as Year 2000 updates.

For more information about the specific Year 2000 issues that this service pack addresses, and the system update features included, see the list below. You may not need all of the updates that are listed. Windows Update will automatically install only the software updates you need.

System Requirements
This update applies to Windows 98 with Outlook Express 5.

How to use
You don't need to do anything after installing this update.

How to uninstall
Uninstall is not available.

Year 2000 Issues:

- Regional Settings Date/Time
  If Regional Settings in Control Panel are set to use two-digit years, the date/time function may not return the proper date because only two digits at a time can be accepted.

- Microsoft Wallet
  When entering credit card information in versions of Wallet before version 2.1.0.1383, you must enter month, day, and year for expiration dates after 2000. Otherwise, information may be read incorrectly. For example, entering a credit card with expiration 5/01 will be interpreted as May 1 of the current year.

- Java Virtual Machine
  Some Year 2000 issues have been reported in connection with Java virtual machines based on the Sun Microsystems Java Development Kit (versions 1.1.1-1.1.5). For example, if your Web site uses Java and makes use of the java.txt.SimpleDateFormat class library and you enter four digits for the year, the date functions may use only the first two digits.

- Dialer.Exe Log
  If you make a phone call using the phone dialer, the log file that is created displays the year portion of the call date incorrectly.

- Date/Time control
  If you open Date/Time in Control Panel and set the date to February 29 of a leap year and then use the up/down buttons to change years, February 29 might be displayed even for non-leap years.

- WordPad custom properties
  If you select Properties/Custom on a Wordpad or Word document, the custom date setting will not accept the Year 2000 as a valid entry when entered as a two-digit year, or "00." Additionally, since all two digit dates are assumed to be in the 20th century, if the time zone is set to Asia, the date properties will lose a day when you enter the year as 2000.

- Date Rollover
  If your system boots up at the precise fraction of a second when the date rolls at midnight, the system clock may display an inaccurate time/date. This is an extremely rare occurrence.

- Lagging IP Lease dates
  If you log on to a LAN after March 1, 2000 and run Winipcfg from the Run command or Ipconfig from the DOS VM, the DHCP client reports the IP lease date as having been obtained on the previous day.

- Programming to data access components
  Your date may be translated as a time under the following conditions: If you are a programmer and code to ADO or OLE DB, use data access components such as adDate, adDBDate, Dbtype_Filetime, chose to use an international date format with periods as separators, and specify a year less than 60.

- Microsoft Foundation Class Library
  After the Year 2000, programs that use the COleDateTime function may improperly parse a date.

- DOS Xcopy
  When using xcopy in real mode with the optional parameter /D:date, xcopy does not accept years entered as two digits, except for the years 80 through 99. The message "Invalid date" is displayed. When using xcopy in protected mode (from within Windows) two-digit dates are accepted but are recognized as being within the 20th century (02/05/01 is seen as 02/05/1901).

System Update features:

- Active Accessibility
  This update addresses issues with color schemes when using Microsoft® Active Accessibility options.

- Computer Does Not Resume To Recognize USB Device From Standby
  If you connect a Universal Serial Bus (USB) device to your Windows 98-based computer while the computer is in Standby mode, the computer does not resume. The computer remains in Standby mode and may not recognize the USB device once it has resumed.

- Bulk Transfer URBs Can Specify More Than 64 Bytes
  The Universal Serial Bus (USB) 1.00 specification defines bulk transfers to be 4, 8,16, 32 or 64 bytes. However, the TransferBufferLength field of _URB_BULK_OR_INTERRUPT_TRANSFER can specify a much larger byte size. The USB specification limits the bulk transfer size to a maximum of 64 bytes at the port driver level.

- Computer with Plug and Play Network Adapter Is Not Found After you have upgraded to Windows 98 on a Windows 95-based computer with a Plug and Play Network Interface Card (NIC) installed, your computer may not be visible in Network Neighborhood to other computers on the network.

- System Policy to Require Validation by Network May Not Work If you are using a system policy that requires validation by the network for Windows access, you may be able to access the desktop even when the network does not validate your user account.

- Computer Hangs After 49.7 Days If your computer is left running for 49.7 days without restarting, your Windows 98-based computer may stop responding (hang). This is caused by a problem with the timing algorithm in the Vtdapi.vxd file.

- New Dialing Rules for Spain and Italy Require TAPI Update A new numbering and dialing plan for Spain became effective on April 3, 1998. The previous numbering and dialing plan was discontinued on June 5, 1998. As a result, when using a computer running Windows 98 you may not be able to correctly dial long-distance telephone numbers if your current dialing location is in Spain or Italy.

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