Eric, if you want a link to the patch that was put out two days ago, then see the thread called Win98 ME XP Critical Security Patch. I posted the initial message of that thread shortly after Microsoft issued the bulletin. I copied from that bulletin verbatim. Within hours the URL supplied by Microsoft was not functional. What a way to run a company. The second message in the thread has the new URL. It is still working - but act fast!
The security gap is astounding. Any attacker can take over your machine and do anything with it that a computer is capable of doing. (You know, send viruses, send threatening messages to world leaders - all tracable to you.)
Like FL310 I can't help you with XP problems. People don't want XP. They want Win9X fixes and licenses to run it on new machines. But Bill doesn't sell any of those.
DB6, not sure about the Mac but suspect linux will be the solution to the Microsoft problem.