On Thursday of last week, Windows users started complaining that while they could access the Windows Update Web site, they couldn"t download the actual updates to Microsoft"s Windows XP, 2000 and Me operating systems.
Now, after a five-day outage, Microsoft, on Tuesday, have fixed a technician"s error allowing Windows users to once again access critical operating system updates on the company"s Web site.
"The software was updated on Thursday, and there was an error in the update," a Microsoft representative said. "Now it"s fixed."
The problem affected Microsoft"s domain-name-service (DNS) servers; computers that act as the yellow pages of the Internet. Normally, the DNS servers provide the numerical Internet addresses of various Internet services -- or, in this case, Microsoft-specific services -- at the request of Web browsers or other programs.
Yet for nearly a week the process went awry, leaving Windows users unable to reach the servers that stored the update code. Among the updates was a critical security patch for a problem that could leave PCs running Windows XP open to attack by online intruders.
"Anytime you try to make things easier for users in some ways, you can screw up in other ways," said Will Zachmann, an industry analyst at market researcher Meta Group. "The whole thing with updates is an annoyance. They have had some glitches with it, and they have to work it out."