Microsoft in slip-up over Vista service pack
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The software maker erroneously posts a note on its developer site saying a "release candidate" version of the Vista service pack was being made available. Microsoft does plan one eventually, but it's not imminent.
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DRM restrictions may have caused Microsoft's Vista virtualization flip-flop.
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Microsoft confirmed Thursday that its invite-only group of about 15,000 testers has had the final version of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) for the past two weeks.Other Vista users, however, will have to wait until March to obtain a legal copy of the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) version of Vista SP1, the company reiterated.According to a Microsoft spokeswoman, the build designated Vista SP1 RC Refresh 2, which was seeded to testers on Jan. 24, is identical to&#160;the code that company developers shipped&#160;out the door on Monday as RTM.&quot;In final stages of a product, Microsoft likes to get as much validation as possible before releasing,&quot; the spokeswoman said in an e-mail. &quot;The release candidate ended up being a high enough quality to be approved to release to manufacturing.&quot;The shift in nomenclature, but not bits, is common. Eventually, a vendor must approve a build as &quot;gold code,&quot; at which point that edition becomes the shipping version. Last November, for example, Apple Inc. issued a test build of Mac OS X 10.5.1 to developers one day, then called it good to go and posted it for download the next.However, users who weren&#39;t part of the SP1 testing group must wait until March to get their hands on the update, the spokeswoman repeated today. In five to six weeks -- mid-March according to Microsoft -- the service pack will be offered via Windows Update as a 65MB optional update and posted to Download Center as a 450MB stand-alone installer that supports five languages. A month later, in mid-April, Windows Update will automatically download and install SP1 on Vista-equipped PCs whose users have set Automatic Updates to do hands-off updating.Subscribers to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) and TechNet will get a slight jump on the general public. &quot;In early March, MSDN and TechNet subscribers will be able to get the &#39;Windows Vista with SP1&#39; full DVD,&quot; the same spokeswoman said in another e-mail. The updated operating system will be offered to MSDN and TechNet subscribers through their respective download centers.Microsoft is holding SP1 so that it can identify device drivers that won&#39;t reinstall -- as they must -- during the service pack update process. On Monday morning, Mike Nash, vice president of Windows product management, said that while SP1 had met the RTM criteria, it would not be available for several weeks because of the&#160;driver problems.That generated a firestorm of criticism from users, who vented by posting over 200 comments to Nash&#39;s announcement, calling the decision &quot;stupid&quot; and &quot;one of the all-time worst moves&quot; by Microsoft.Judging by the tone of nearly 120 comments left on Microsoft&#39;s official TechNet blog, IT professionals and developers are even angrier. The subscribers called the withholding of SP1 &quot;boneheaded&quot; and a &quot;slap in the face,&quot; or dubbed it &quot;the Vista SP1 RTM Debacle.&quot; Others questioned the value of their TechNet subscriptions, admitted that they had had to download a pirated copy using BitTorrent so that they could start testing, and said they would postpone Vista deployments for months because of the delay.Several wondered why reviewers in the press had the finished bits before they did.But a commenter identified only as Joe put it most succinctly: &quot;This is the lamest decision since Microsoft Bob. I get this the same time as my mom?&quot;The backlash may have gotten through to Microsoft. On Monday night, Kathy Dixon, the TechNet Plus team member who normally writes the blog, said that she was looking into the possibility of moving up the availability date of SP1. But as of Thursday night, she had no solution for users. &quot;I have escalated this and am continuing to push internally for a solution ASAP,&quot; Dixon wrote around 8 p.m. EST. &quot;Please hang in there, I should have something more specific soon.&quot;Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Microsoft is including a set of nonsecurity updates that prepare customers to install Windows Vista Service Pack 1 as part of its monthly &quot;Patch Tuesday&quot; security fixes.Two of three prerequisite updates needed to install SP1 are hitting Microsoft&#39;s Windows Update for the first time Tuesday along with the usual batch of security updates it releases every month. The technologies -- called KB937287 and KB938371 -- are marked &quot;Important&quot; and will install automatically if a Windows user has Windows Update set to the recommended configuration, according to a post on the Windows Vista team blog.KB937287 is an update to Vista&#39;s servicing stack, and KB938371 is a multicomponent update, according to the blog post attributed to Nick White, a product manager on the Vista team. Both must be installed before a machine can successfully be updated to Windows Vista SP1.The third prerequisite to installing SP1, KB935509, also is being released through Windows Update Tuesday. However, that technology is an update of a previously released technology, not a brand new release.Microsoft plans to release Vista SP1&#160;in its first five languages -- English, French, Spanish, German, and Japanese -- to the Windows Update and the download center on Microsoft&#39;s Web site in mid-March. However, some computers may not work with the update right away because of device-driver incompatibilities; Microsoft is hoping to resolve those by mid-March, which is why it is putting off the release until then even though the final code for SP1 is available now.Following its first release, Microsoft in mid-April plans to make SP1 available in the first five languages to anyone who has chosen not to download it. Microsoft will follow with the remaining language releases of Vista SP1 soon after. Many believe the SP1 milestone is the one that will bring about a new wave of adoption for Vista, especially among&#160;business customers that have been awaiting the service pack&#39;s release&#160;before updating employee desktops.Microsoft releases security updates every second Tuesday of the month, which is why security researchers call the day &quot;Patch Tuesday.&quot; The company often includes nonsecurity updates with these releases, although it also will release nonsecurity updates on the fourth Tuesday of the month.
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Here it comes: Microsoft today confirmed that the first service pack for Windows Vista is entering beta next month and is slated to ship during the first quarter of 2008. A third (and final) service pack for XP is on tap for the same timeframe.
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Better all the time WPC Microsoft has used its annual Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) to stress that it's working to solve stubborn compatibility problems between Windows Vista and partner products.â¦
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Microsoft plans to issue a service pack for Visual Studio on Friday, as well as a version of the update specifically aimed at fixing issues with the software for those running Windows Vista.
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Some users have gotten the massive Office 2007 SP1 update automatically, even though Microsoft said it would not use Windows' AU (Automatic Updates) to push out the large upgrade for several months, the company confirmed Thursday.Anyone running a preview copy of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), which was made available to all comers only Wednesday, will receive the Office 2007 upgrade automatically. Users of other in-beta Microsoft products, including Windows XP SP3, which is still in limited testing, will also be hit by the Office update, which weighs in at almost 220MB."As noted to beta customers, if [they] are running Vista SP1 beta software, as part of the beta program, Office 2007 SP1 on pre-release Windows Vista SP1 will automatically install as planned for this beta program," said Bobbie Harder, a senior program manager with the WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) group.Others, including Susan Bradley, a writer for the WindowsSecrets newsletter, noticed the automatic download and install of Office 2007 SP1. "I woke up on Wednesday morning to find a notification that a Vista machine had rebooted after being patched," Bradley said in Thursday's issue of the newsletter. "I found, to my surprise, that the new Service Pack 1 for Office 2007, which was released on Tuesday, had been auto-installed."Bradley also said that even if users of Vista SP1, Windows XP SP3, or WSUS 3.0 SP3 manually installed Office 2007 SP1, AU later automatically installs -- actually re-installs -- the service pack.Earlier this week, when Microsoft unveiled the service pack, it said AU would not be used to deliver SP1 for at least three months and maybe as many as six months. In any case, it promised to give users 30 days' notice before it pushed it out using AU.While technically true -- Office 2007 SP1 is only shoved to users running a preview OS -- some Vista users have been confused by the appearance of the service pack in their Windows Update listings this week as they downloaded and applied numerous security patches.Harder explained what Vista users experience in a blog post Thursday. "On Vista in the Windows Update Control Panel Applet, the Office 2007 SP1 will appear as an available update to download and install, but it will not automatically download and install, regardless of the automatic settings," she said.That's true, countered Bradley, but because the service pack shows on the list and is checked by default, it's easy for users to overlook it, then get slammed with the massive download. "If you are a bit asleep and just blindly approve all of the patches, you get a very large wait while SP1 for Office 2007 is downloaded," she said.A Computerworld reader reported exactly that. "I received [Office 2007 SP1] last night Dec 11 as part of Windows Auto-update," said someone identified as 6monthVistaUser in a comment attached to a story about SP1. "Last night was the largest auto-update ever (230 MB download) filled with 11 updates. 1 was for IE v7, 6 were for Vista cumulative patches, 1 was the Office 2007 Service Pack 1, the other one was for Business Contacts Manager SP 1."Harder defended the process. "For customers who want the benefits of Office 2007 SP1 now, we have made it available," she said. She also noted that users could choose not to pull in the service pack. "Download and installation of the Office 2007 SP1 via the Vista Windows Update control panel applet requires explicit user interaction, just as with the Microsoft Update site," she said. "Once the list of available updates appears, they can de-select or uncheck the box next to Office 2007 SP1 and choose to download and install other updates, or just close the applet."The next time Windows Update runs, however, Office 2007 SP1 reappears, again checked by default. To strike it off the list, users must right-click the item in the list and choose "hide update."
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Install, spin three times, buy a monkey and wait Microsoft is now letting the common rabble get its mitts on the latest beta build of Windows Vista Service Pack 1.â¦
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Some say Win XP SP2 enhancements cause conflicts, don't protect as claimed.
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The latest beta release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is available to the general public as a free download. Microsoft decided to release the update publicly several weeks earlier than planned, easing Vista early adopters' year-long wait for enhancements to the desktop operating system.
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Windows Vista is causing problems for those trying to hook up a PC to a broadband net connection.
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With the release of "Extras," Microsoft has finally delivered something.  Regardless, Vista is in trouble and Microsoft should abandon it before it's too late.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft has finally broken its silence on the timing of the release of theÂ highly anticipated Windows Vista Service Pack 1, saying the software updates should be in final release in the first quarter of next year with the company shipping off a beta next month to 10,000 to 15,000 testers. The company stressed that SP1, "is not a delivery vehicle for new features," said David Zipkin, senior product manager for Microsoft. SP1 will include OS updates strictly to fix bugs and enhance the performance, reliability, and application compatibility of Vista, he said. Zipkin acknowledged that Microsoft has "a reputation of sneaking fixes into service packs in the past." For example, Windows XP SP 2 included a host of new security features after XP was exploited by the Blaster worm and other serious attacks. However, the service pack also was incompatible with many applications running on XP, which caused massive headaches for a lot of users. Vista SP1 will not break any applications already running on the OS. "Anything that works on Vista is going to keep on working on SP1," he said. Vista SP1 will include the 20 updates for the OS already released over Microsoft's automatic update services as well as ones that are new to the update. In all, thousands of Vista files will be changed as part of the release, Zipkin said. However, Vista SP1 will be a significantly smaller download than Windows XP SP2 was, he said. XP SP2 was more than 100MB in size, while Vista SP1 will be about 50MB, he said. Microsoft will deliver SP1 over its automatic update services to consumers running Windows Vista. Business customers can use this service as well or roll out a stand-alone version of SP1, which has a bigger footprint, through whatever software a company uses for pushing updates to desktops, Zipkin said. The stand-alone version of SP1 will be bigger than the one automatically pushed out through Windows update services for several reasons, one of which is it contains all of the 36 language updates, Zipkin said. The SP1 pushed out over the Web can detect what language a PC is running and only install that update. Specifically, SP1 will fix performance features, such as allowing for the computer to resume functionality after being in the Hibernate or Standby state, and also reduce the time it takes between a user hitting CTRL/ALT/DELETE to get the log-in prompt so they can log on to Windows, Zipkin said. Microsoft also in SP1 will improve the performance of Internet Explorer 7 to speed Javascript processing and reduce CPU utilization so sites running AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) can run faster, he said. On the reliability side, the update will reduce the likelihood of Vista crashing from a vague "search protocol handler" error message that users have reported happens frequently, Zipkin said. The company also fixed other common crashes users have reported through Microsoft's automatic reporting service. Many businesses have held off on updating to Vista until the arrival of SP1. Zipkin said that while Microsoft supports their decision, the company is recommending they test applications with Vista now so that they are ready to deploy immediately when SP1 is available. For consumers that may be waiting, Microsoft recommends they go ahead and install Vista or purchase a Vista machine now, and they will receive SP1 via automatic updates. To date, Microsoft reports that about 60 million consumer licenses for Vista have been sold, and 42 million licenses have been sold to businesses through its volume licensing program.
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Microsoft says error in e-mail led some to incorrectly conclude that Vista Service Pack 1 beta is available.
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Compatibility issues A delayed update to Microsoft's application development suite looks unlikely to fully work with Windows Vista.â¦
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The service pack for the newest Microsoft operating system is out and about, though not officially.