Microsoft accused of not complying with EU orders

Microsoft is failing to comply with a European Commission order to sell an unbundled version of its Windows operating system, competitors that were asked to examine the program said on Tuesday.

A year ago, Mario Monti, then the European commissioner for competition, ordered Microsoft to sell a second version of Windows in Europe that has its music and video-playing program, Media Player, stripped out. The second version, installed with a rival alternative to Media Player, is supposed to be introduced in the next few weeks.

But David Stewart, deputy general counsel for RealNetworks, said on Tuesday that Microsoft was still not ready to comply with the European ruling. RealNetworks, which makes rival software, has the most to gain from enforcement of the order.

The commission has yet to decide whether Microsoft's proposal for introducing the unbundled version of Windows meets its requirements. Stewart contended that "the version of Windows Microsoft is proposing to sell has technical problems that render it less functional than the existing version of Windows."

Real Networks said Microsoft had deleted registry entries associated with media-playing functions in Windows. Without the registry entries, Stewart said, rival media players installed in the second version of Windows could not work with other applications like Word documents and some Web sites.

A spokesman for Microsoft, Dirk Delmartino, said the company was aware of the commission's concern about its plan to delete the registry entries.

He acknowledged the problem, but said it was a direct result of having to comply with the commission's order.

"We told the commission there would be certain functions that don't work," Delmartino said. "This is a result of the removal of 186 Media Player files."

Some computer makers said they were worried about whether the new version of Windows would work properly.