Knowledge Base Article

Product: ToolBook
Component: DHTML
Product version(s): ToolBook 2004 SP2 and higher

PROBLEM
DHTML Deployed courses which used to work just fine all of the sudden sporadically start locking up while navigating through the content while using Internet Explorer.

DETAILS
Microsoft released the following on April 8, 2008

Microsoft Cumulative Security patch KB947864
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-024.mspx

The side effect of this Microsoft patch is that ToolBook's use of the Windows Media Player to play media files within the DHTML is causing the Web Browser to run out of available connections back to the Web Server, and this lock up is essentially the browser waiting for a connection to be freed up.

This problem has been verified using Internet Explorer 7, and we have received reports that this has been seen using Internet Explorer 6 as well. It is also suspected that this problem might also occur on earlier versions of ToolBook as well.

THE FIX
Microsoft has acknowledged that this is a bug with their patch, and has offered the following Hotfix:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;954543

OTHER POSSIBLE WORKAROUNDS
Possible solutions include:

• Modifying the course so that the Windows Media Player is not used to play media files.
  • If you are using the Universal Media Player to play your media files, you could instead choose to use the QuickTime player or RealPlayer (using the Advanced tab of the Universal Media Player editor) if that file format can be played by the other players.
  • For example the .mp3 format can be played by the Windows Media Player, QuickTime Player as well as RealPlayer.
  • You would need to ensure that your end users had the appropriate player installed.
• Removing this security patch from any client machine experiencing the problem.
  • Go to the control panel, add/remove programs and check Show updates
  • For IE 7, look under Windows Internet Explorer 7 - Software Updates
  • It is called Hotfix for Windows Internet Explorer 7 (KB947864)
  • If using IE 6, the instructions should be similar.
• Adjust each client machine by increasing the number of connections the browser is able to make.
  • This is done by adjusting the value of maxConnectionsPerServer to 99.
  • For information on how to do this see:
    http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/536/