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BugBlog Bug of the Month

Every month the BugBlog picks its Bug of the Month, representing the most significant bug found in the past month. Sometimes, the bug will be the one which could potentially cause the most damage; sometimes it will be the bug which affects the most users. And sometimes, it will be the bug that is just the most interesting bug. This bug will be selected either from the free Bug of the Day, or from the subscription-only BugBlog Plus.

The Bug of the Day for October, 2005 was written on September 22

Installing Adobe Acrobat 7.0 in some cases may interfere with Microsoft Word. According to Microsoft, these are some actions that may not be saved: changing the workspace (toolbars, views, etc) in Word; creating a macro; changing the default font; adding a toolbar. The next time you start Word, these changes aren't saved. Another problem may be when you open Word. You will see this error message
There is insufficient memory. Word cannot display the requested font.
You may also see visual c++ runtime errors. According to Microsoft, the problem is in the COM add-in in from Adobe that gets saved to \Acrobat 7.0 \PDFMaker\Office. Microsoft does not give any indication of whether just some users of Acrobat 7 have these problems. Two workarounds from Microsoft: Manually save macros, preferences, and custom settings in Word; or use the Save All command. They also suggest contacting Adobe. See the details at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/906899.

Why this bug? Mostly because it involves a bad interaction between two very popular programs -- Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat. This isn't a damaging security bug that could allow an attacker to gain control of your computer. However, this is the type of error message that often has computer users muttering under their breaths.

Previous Bugs of the Month

September 2005: Apple Security Update Breaks 64-bit Apps

August 2005: Cisco IOS Vulnerable to IPv6 bug

July 2005: RealNetworks Fixes Four Bugs in Their Media Player

June 2005: Flawed Rollout for Netscape 8

May 2005: TCP/IP Fix for Windows

April 2005: Denial of Service against Symantec Norton AntiVirus

March 2005: IDN Spoofing Bug

February 2005: Windows Animated Cursor Bug

January 2005: Windows Firewall Problems with Dial-up connections

The Bug of the Month is also posted at Blogcritics.org