Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches
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Microsoft Corp.&#39;s decision to release a major upgrade for its flagship operating system in the same month that hundreds of thousands of students are reporting to college campuses across the
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Some say Win XP SP2 enhancements cause conflicts, don't protect as claimed.
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Microsoft's attempt to win over new users with a cut-down version of Windows has come in for strong criticism.
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Give your system more oomph by disabling the services that Windows activates automatically, whether or not you actually need them.
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Responding to reports of endlessly rebooting PCs that flooded support newsgroups last week, Microsoft said on Tuesday it had pulled an&#160;update designed to prep Windows Vista for Service Pack 1.Although the update -- actually a pair of prerequisite files that modify Vista&#39;s install components -- has been temporarily pulled from Windows Update, Microsoft has not yet produced a fix for users whose machines either won&#39;t boot or reboot constantly.&quot;Immediately after receiving reports of this error, we made the decision to temporarily suspend automatic distribution of the update to avoid further customer impact while we investigate possible causes,&quot; said Nick White, a Vista program manager, in a post to the company&#39;s blog Tuesday afternoon.White downplayed the problem. &quot;So far, we&#39;ve been able to determine that this problem only affects a small number of customers in unique circumstances. We are working to identify possible solutions and will make the update available again shortly after we address the issue.&quot;According to White, Update 937287 was the cause of the problem. In a support document, Microsoft describes that update as one for Vista&#39;s installation software, &quot;the component that handles the installation and the removal of software updates, language packs, optional Windows features and service packs.&quot; Along with a companion update pushed to users starting Feb. 12 and another that was offered to machines running Vista Ultimate and Vista Business in January, the guilty update is required before Vista can be upgraded to&#160;Service Pack 1 (SP1).Shortly after the two prerequisites hit Windows Update last week, users began reporting problems on Microsoft&#39;s support newsgroups. Most said that the update hung as the message &quot;Configuring Updates Step 3 of 3 -- 0% Complete&quot; appeared on the screen. When users rebooted hoping to clear the error, their PCs went into an endless cycle of reboots. A smaller number of users said that their computers refused to boot normally.Some users have been able to regain control by booting from a Vista install DVD and selecting the &quot;Restore from a previous restore point&quot; option.What&#39;s it doing in there?It&#39;s uncertain whether Microsoft knows exactly why Update 937287 is hammering PCs. Even after White posted the company statement to the Vista blog, Darrell Gorter, a Microsoft employee, was asking users to send him system logs. &quot;I still need more log files for the investigations that we are doing,&quot; Gorter said in a message on the support newsgroup. Late last week, Gorter made a similar request on the same message board.Also unclear is the actual extent of the problem. Although White called the number &quot;small,&quot; the traffic on the Vista SP1 newsgroup is heavy. One thread had been viewed more than 35,500 times by late Tuesday.But the problem is not new. Computerworld has found messages describing the endless reboot problem dated Dec. 13, one day after it first offered a Vista SP1 release candidate to the general public. That build of SP1 also required the prerequisite updates, including 937287.Microsoft was not available for comment Tuesday night to answer questions about whether, and if so how, the snafu will impact its plans to start offering SP1 to most users next month. Currently, only beta testers, Volume Licensing customers, and subscribers to TechNet Plus and Microsoft Developer Network have been able to download legal versions of the service pack.That will change in mid-March when SP1 is set to land on Windows Update as an optional update, and again in mid-April when Microsoft said it would start installing SP1 automatically on most PCs running Vista.Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.&#160;
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Microsoft is set to change the way that organisations handle upgrades. The company has teamed up with Dell and Vintela in an attempt to cut the people-hours that are spent on software support.
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Another lawsuit and a big technical delay for Longhorn. Misery, thy name is Microsoft.
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Unpatched Windows machines are vulnerable to latest adware attack
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Microsoft has delayed the automatic distribution of a major upgrade to Windows XP Professional for at least another week.
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That's what some IT managers say, a survey finds. Even more believe it'll be the toughest Windows update ever.
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Windows XP users have until early next year to update business systems and applications before the operating system&#39;s Service Pack (SP) 2 is fully unleashed.
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Users of Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition are scheduled to begin receiving Service Pack 2 via automatic update starting today. But delivery of the Professional Edition has been delayed at least a week while Microsoft and its users grapple ...
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As businesses and consumers upgrade to meet Vista's demands, old hardware needs to be dealt with.
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There&#39;s only one problem with Microsoft&#39;s Service Pack 2, a key upgrade to the popular Windows XP operating system: It turns some computers into large, expensive doorstops.
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Is the desktop dead?  Microsoft can't even make its updates sexy anymore.
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Microsoft has doubled the period of time it will allow business users of Windows XP to delay installing Service Pack 2. Customers who wished to avoid having systems updated while they were testing the upgrade
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Owners of Dell Inspiron notebooks have reported that Microsoft&#39;s Windows Service Pack 2 is cutting their system speeds dramatically -- in some cases by a factor of almost ten, from 2.6GHz to 300MHz.