EU sleuths think Microsoft sabotaged Windows

IN IT'S ONGOING BATTLE with Microsoft, the European Commission is investigating the possibility that the Vole has sneakily sabotaged the Media Player-free versions of Windows it is obliged to ship to the EU.

The Commission decided last year that Microsoft was abusing its monopoly position by including its Media Player software in its Windows XP 'operating system'.

It told the software maker to ship a stripped-down version of Windows XP to countries in the European Union and slapped a mighty fine on the monopolist.

Microsoft is still appealing against the decision but has begun shipping Media Player-free versions of XP to the EU, as instructed.

A report in today's Wall Street Journal suggests Microsoft has fiddled with the registry in its stripped-down Windows offerings and the result is that video clips embedded into Microsoft Word documents don't run properly, for example.

The Journal quotes Jonathan Todd, a spokesman for European antitrust chief Neelie Kroes, as saying: "The commission is still in the process of assessing ... whether Microsoft is complying properly with the requirement to offer a fully functioning version of Windows without Media Player."

In particular, he said, "the commission has to verify the requirement that Microsoft refrain from using any commercial, technological or contractual terms that would have the effect of rendering the unbundled version of Windows less attractive or less functional."

A spokesVole said Microsoft was "fully committed to complying" with the Commission, but said any such problems with the registry would be the result of the unbundling process the Commission had insisted on in the first place.

Microsoft's digital video competitor RealNetworks had been able to demonstrate a Media Player-free version of Windows running "without technical glitches", the Journal notes. The WSJ story is here. Sub required. µ