Another Fix it bug in Microsoft software

Microsoft today announced another bug for which they have a simple downloadable program that will zap the registry and disable the buggy code. They call these "Fix it" programs, and an inventory of them is available at support.microsoft.com/fixit ..

In the last two weeks, there have been three Fix it programs that disable software with a critical vulnerability. 

• MicrosoftFixit50291.msi was released July 13, 2009 to fix a bug in the Active X control that displays Excel spreadsheets in Internet Explorer. For more, see Knowledge Base Article 973472.
• MicrosoftFixit50287.msi  was released July 6, 2009 to fix a bug in a video related ActiveX control. For more see Knowledge Base Article 972890 and my write-up.
• MicrosoftFixit50256.msi was released May 28, 2009 to fix a bug with QuickTime files. For more see Knowledge Base Article 971778 and my write-up.

In each case, you simply download the .msi file and run it.

If System Restore is active (at least on Windows XP) the Fix it program makes a restore point with a name like "Installed Microsoft Fix it 50291". If System Restore is not active, it seems to have no effect on the Fix it programs. I verified that MicrosoftFixit50287.msi makes the restore point before updating the registry and I expect the others do too.

There seems to be no simple way to tell if a particular Fix it program has been run yet or not; they don't appear in the Add/Remove programs list, at least not under XP SP3. When in doubt, just run it again. Disabling something that's already disabled is not a problem.  
 
Eventually Microsoft will fix the buggy software, but from what I've read, none of the software seems very important, especially to a Firefox user such as myself. I'm in no rush to re-enable anything.