The San Francisco Chronicle reports that California consumers racing to make the deadline for claiming benefits from a $1.1 billion Microsoft court settlement are hitting a virtual wall — the Web site containing the claim form they need gives them gobbledygook or aborts their request. Curious, I gave it a try. I had no problem generating the form. But something strange of a different sort happened to me. I visited the site using the Firefox browser, but when I clicked the “Create Printable Claim Form” button, the document-creation process forced my computer to open Internet Explorer and display the resulting PDF document there. The site is not run by Microsoft, but by a court-appointed, independent claims administration company.