Microsoft wants more Vista testers
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It hopes to have about 5 million testers checking out latest version of Windows update, as it tries to stamp out bugs.
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When Steve Sinchak's new Intel network card became "really slow" after upgrading his Windows Vista PC with a pre-release version of Service Pack 1, he tried uninstalling its software driver and replacing it with a new one.But to his dismay, the Chicago-area technology author and blogger found himself "stuck in a loop" during the InstallShield-managed process -- unable to replace his sluggish older driver with a new, peppier one."It's messed up to the point where I may have to use brute force to uninstall the driver, or wipe my hard drive and reinstall Windows Vista completely," he said.Sinchak's is an example, admittedly an extreme one, of the driver problems that forced Microsoft to take the unusual step of holding SP1's availability to users until March even while announcing its release to manufacturing (RTM) on Monday.Not even the hundreds of thousands of people who have already been testing Vista SP1, nor the many Windows developers accustomed to being able to download software on Microsoft's MSDN or TechNet Web sites immediately after RTM, will be able to get SP1 for another 6-8 weeks.And if you are one of the unlucky Vista users using a driver known to break and need reinstallation after the upgrade to SP1, Windows Update will quarantine you from getting SP1 until the driver is fixed."We want all of our customers to have the same good experience," said Microsoft senior product manager, David Zipkin, in an interview Monday. "That's why we're erring on the side of caution."Cancel or allow or shut up already?Service Pack 1 remains the milestone by which many companies and consumers judge when a Microsoft product is truly bug-free and mature enough to deploy. Any delay in SP1 could have an adverse effect on Vista uptake, which has been generally strong -- more than 100 million copies shipped -- despite a lukewarm market response.Zipkin points out that most drivers, once re-installed after the SP1 upgrade, should work properly.That was the experience of several Computerworld readers.Zipkin blames hardware vendors for failing to strictly follow Redmond's instructions on how drivers should be installed."The issue is that the drivers were not written per the spec we have on MSDN to ensure successful updates," he said, a spec that "has been around since the XP days."Zipkin declined to elaborate or comment on Sinchak's case. And neither Intel nor Macrovision, maker of the InstallShield software, immediately responded to requests for comment.But some experts think that the problem must be related to under-the-hood changes in Vista SP1, especially those concerning security and user privileges, which can directly affect how applications and drivers are installed."Microsoft looks like they are monkeying around with a lot of lower-level stuff," said Paul Morris, a project manager at QualityLogic, a Moorpark, Calif. software and driver testing firm. "In my mind, you've got to treat SP1 as an entirely new OS."Vista's overhauled security model had two major changes. First, local users who were formerly granted administrator access by default are granted standard access in Vista. Second, a new feature called User Account Control, or UAC, prompts users to verify whenever a new application or driver is about to be installed.Both moves help to prevent viruses and malware from taking hold. But UAC has been criticized by some users for its overzealousness, though UAC pop-ups decrease dramatically after the first month, according to Redmond.Moreover, moving users to standard rather than administrator accounts wreaked havoc on many applications and drivers that depended on full administrator access to install or run properly.If SP1 makes even small changes to Vista's security model, that could cause drivers to break again, according to Ian Lao, an analyst at In-Stat. Why? For one, most vendors took the easier, less rigorous option of patching and modifying their drivers to make them Vista compatible, rather than "rewriting them from the ground-up," said Lao. That makes them more fragile.Moreover, many drivers, unlike applications, can't be completely shut down during an installation process. The upgraded software -- in this case Vista -- may not be able to properly update the drivers, he said. Thus, permissions may be lost during the SP1 upgrade, or resources moved to different locations.Of drivers and ass-kickingsDrivers were a major bane to Vista in its early months last year.Despite Microsoft's claim that more than 1.6 million peripherals worked with Vista at its launch, there were numerous complaints from early adopters, gamers and other power users about non-working devices."It definitely wasn't just a vocal minority that had a problem with drivers at Vista's launch," said Robert McLaws, a blogger who also tested SP1 but didn't face any driver issues.Indeed, driver issues had been on the wane. At its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) conference last May, Microsoft said that 1.9 million devices supported Vista.Microsoft has not updated that number since then. But it says that over 78,000 hardware products are now supported by Windows Update, up from 34,000 at launch.And 17,000 peripherals and devices (see list, IE 6+ required) have passed one of Microsoft's two rigorous certification programs: Certified for Windows Vista, which requires successful testing by a third party such as QualityLogic, and the more self-reported Works with Windows Vista program, which is more reliant on self-reporting."A lot of OEMs did not take the Vista launch seriously," McLaws said. "So Microsoft took their problem reports to vendors and kicked some ass."In a PowerPoint presentation distributed to media last month, Microsoft was confident enough to state "Many device and software problems behind us: Nearly all Windows Vista PCs have drivers for every single device installed, available on WU [Windows Update] or from vendor websites."But Microsoft may have relaxed too soon. Morris says none of vendors that came to QualityLogic for certification of their Vista drivers have returned seeking the same service for SP1."They may be hammering on them tooth and nail internally, but they're not asking us to touch it," he said.The result? Monday's delay.Gregg Keizer contributed to this story.
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Beyond "the Mom test," CNET News.com's Ina Fried looks at several factors to try to gauge Vista's impact. One of the most striking? How few Vista-specific programs there are.
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After years of delays and billions in development and marketing efforts, it would seem that Microsoft Corp. would want anyone who possibly can to buy its new Windows Vista operating system. Yet Microsoft is making it hard for Mac owners and other potentially influential customers to adopt the software.
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Some widely used applications haven't been certified for use with Windows Vista, they may, nonetheless, work.
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The final, final test build Microsoft today made available a new test build for Windows Vista, the mythical desktop operating system of legend. It's called RC2, or Release Candidate 2 (build number 5744), and it really is only for diehard Vista testaholics. And the stupid.â¦
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Get a closer look at some of the new features in Vista Service Pack 1.
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Nearly half of businesses are in some phase of preparing to update desktops to Windows Vista with small businesses moving the fastest to implement the OS, according to a new report released Monday.The number of organizations evaluating and testing Vista increased from 29 percent in February 2007 to 48 percent by early November 2007, found the report, commissioned by reseller CDW and based on information collected by Walker Information from 772 IT decision makers. Moreover, about 35 percent of companies are currently implementing or have implemented Vista already, compared to 12 percent last February, the report said.The report is the third of a wave of reports on Vista adoption that CDW has done since the OS was in its final testing phases in October 2006. In the latest phase of release, which tracked Vista adoption from October 31 until Nov. 7, 2007, small businesses comprised 53 percent of those companies either using or evaluating Vista. The higher-education segment came in second, with 49 percent reporting that they are evaluating or using the OS, while medium-to-large businesses were third, with 48 percent.Because of lingering hardware and application compatibility issues between existing company IT assets and Vista, CDW still advises customers to move to Vista on a case-by-case basis, said David Cottingham, director of product and partner management at CDW. In the case of small businesses, they may not have the application or hardware dependencies on Windows XP that larger businesses have.&quot;There are still definitely concerns when you get into custom applications in industries that will run on XP,&quot; he said. &quot;If [companies] have custom applications that don&#39;t run on Vista yet, they&#39;re going to stay on XP.&quot;CDW is still selling both XP and Vista, but Cottingham said the company does not have data on which version of the OS is selling more now that Vista has been available to businesses for more than a year. In September, Microsoft had to extend the OEM&#160;license for XP for five more months through June 30, 2008, because of customer demand for the OS. Microsoft had planned to stop selling XP through OEMs and retailers on Jan. 31.For its part, Microsoft has made strides to resolve compatibility issues with updates to Vista, and the numbers from CDW&#39;s survey seem to reflect that. In February, 50 percent of companies said they were buying additional hardware and software assets to migrate to Vista; by November, that number was down to 44 percent.Many believe it&#39;s inevitable that any businesses currently running XP will eventually move to Vista; it&#39;s just a matter of when. The release of Vista SP! (Service Pack 1), which is scheduled to be generally available by the end of March, should serve to increase the numbers of companies adopting Vista. Microsoft issued on Friday a public refresh of the first release candidate for SP1, which suggests the software update will be in its final release according to schedule.However, there is some belief among industry watchers that if Microsoft releases the next version of Windows, code-named Windows Vista 7, by its target of late next year to early 2010, some businesses may opt to skip Vista and move directly from XP to Windows 7 instead.
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Microsoft's Jim Allchin announces Release Candidate 1 of Windows Vista with "a lot of improvements."
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Microsoft Corp. released tools to help companies deploy Windows Vista, acknowledging that there are deployment and application-compatibility pains enterprise IT managers face when updating business desktops to the new OS.
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Now that Windows Vista has been unleashed onto an expecting public, a number of minor issues have cropped up in the new operating system. Microsoft has already posted a handful of hotfixes for those running into issues, although they aren't critical enough to be published on Microsoft Update.
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InfoWorld - Hoping to accelerate the adoption of Vista for businesses, Microsoft&#160;on Tuesday unveiled tools&#160;that will&#160;help companies deploy the new Windows client OS, including software that allows older versions of Windows to run virtually alongside Vista.
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Multiple Microsoft sources have confirmed that the first beta test editions of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista were distributed to a select group of about 12,000 testers today. BetaNews learned these are indeed exclusive invitees, not merely a subset of the company's MSDN or TechNet subscriber base.
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Although it's not saying yet when the public will get Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, another seed of the update to the aging OS has been given to a closed-set group of testers.
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Microsoft Corp.  said on Tuesday  that is has begun widespread testing of Windows Vista, the  long-awaited new version of the operating system that sits on  more than 90 percent of the world's PCs.
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Microsoft Corp. said it is  launching on Tuesday its second major test version of the  Windows Vista operating system, which the company has said it  plans to debut next year.
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Microsoft Corp.  launched  Windows Vista for businesses on Thursday and said that by the  end of next year more than 200 million people would use the new  version of its dominant operating system or new office software  and server computer products.