In a move which may avoid it having to pay swingeing damages over a law suit which cost Toshiba $1.2 billion last year, Compaq told nearly two million users of a software patch which fixes a glitch in a disk controller system. The Wayne Reaud law firm filed class action cases against Compaq, Packard Bell, HP and e-Machines on November 1st last year, after settling with Toshiba, which apparently did not want to get involved in legal wrangling. Now, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Compaq will tell 1.7 million users of Presarios that they can fix the problem, which relates to a glitch in the disk controller and which stops people downloading to floppy disks while multitasking. It is offering a software patch for 26 Presario machines on its support forum. We couldn't track the patch when we ventured into Compaq's rather labyrinthine support forum. The report added that Compaq discovered the software fix when testing PCs in preparation for a legal battle with Reaud. No-one from Compaq was available for comment at press time. ® See also Compaq to introduce new desktop boxes