The European Commission (EC) has been circulating questionnaires to PC makers that ask two general sets of questions regarding the ongoing anti-trust case against Microsoft, according to the Bloomberg News service.

One line of questioning, the report said, asks whether Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has leaned on PC makers to tell the EC that offering a range of browsers in the European Union (EU) with Windows is a bad idea.

The second line of questioning, Bloomberg continued, regards what kind of "ballot screen" the PC makers want so that users will have to choose a browser from several browser offerings when they first start up a new PC.

Many observers believe that Microsoft had tried to head off such actions in March when it revealed that IE8 could be turned off in the upcoming Windows 7.

However, that seems to have had little influence on the EC's competition executive, who appears to want to undo 13 years of what she views as anti-competitive behavior.

Microsoft's most recent contretemps with the EC began with a formal complaint filed against it in December 2007 by Norwegian browser makers Opera. It claimed that Microsoft unfairly blocks other browsers from competing with Internet Explorer, going back to 1996.

The EC notified Microsoft in January that its initial probe into Opera's complaint found that Microsoft had impeded competition. The notification came in what's called a "Statement of Objections" or SO. From there, Microsoft had roughly three months to formulate a legal response to the SO, followed by a hearing if it requested one.

Microsoft filed its response to the SO in April, and had scheduled a hearing to orally present its defense in Brussels June 3 through 5.

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"We are committed to ensuring that Microsoft is in full compliance with European law and our obligations as established by the European Court of First Instance in its September 2007 ruling," a Microsoft spokesperson said in an e-mail to InternetNews.com.

The spokesperson was referring to an earlier anti-trust case brought against it by the EC that ended with the second-highest court in the EU ruling, in September 2007, against Microsoft's appeal. Part of that case concerned Microsoft's bundling of Windows Media Player with Windows.

This time, the EC has been looking at a more invasive technique -- forcing Microsoft to bundle other vendors' browsers, or to force users to choose a browser on first startup off of a "ballot screen" which then might download the browser the user chose. Rumored to be on the EC's list of browsers are Mozilla Firefox, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) Safari, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Chrome, and Opera.

One analyst, though, thinks that PC manufacturers themselves may be harmed in the process, not just Microsoft -- through added testing and support requirements.

"This will just be a nightmare [for OEMs] to manage because it adds a lot of complexity," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told InternetNews.com.

The EC has not said when it will release its decision. However, a source close to the case opined that it could come as soon as the end of June.

A spokesperson for the EC was not reachable in time to comment for this story, but the Bloomberg news story said that the EC's competition spokesperson declined to discuss the questionnaires.