Windows XP SP3 Build 3205 Released w/ New Features

jBubba writes "Windows XP SP3 build 3205 is the first official & authorized release of the next Windows XP service pack; and has been made available to testers as a part of the Windows Server 2008/Windows Vista SP1 beta program. NeoSmart Technologies has the run-down on the included 1,073 patches/hotfixes including security updates. Contrary to popular belief, Windows XP SP3 does ship with new features/components, most of which have been backported from Windows Vista. Some included features: 'New Windows Product Activation model: no need to enter product key during setup. Network Access Protection modules and policies have been brought to XP after being one of the more-well-received features in Windows Vista. New Microsoft Kernel Mode Cryptographic Module - the Windows XP SP3 kernel now includes an entire module that provides easy access to multiple cryptographic algorithms and is available for use in kernel-mode drivers and services. New "Black Hole Router" detection - Windows XP SP3 can detect and protect against rogue routers that are discarding data.'"

Comments

is IE7 included?

[A little Frenchie]

all in the subject

Re:is IE7 included?

[Bacon Bits]

I doubt it. Windows 2000 SP4 was still shipped with IE 5.01 (the version that shipped originally), and, indeed, it is the only way to apply the last service pack for IE 5.01.

I for one

[daedalusblond]

Welcome our new feature-enhanced overlord. Beats the crap out of the glossy bug-ridden one!

Re:I for one

[ChrisMP1]

Think French Revolution, Reign of Terror. Throw out the old, crappy one; replace with new, crappy one. Or have service packs ever produced a good Microsoft product?

But...

[Azuma Hazuki]

...does it run Lin...oh, never *mind*

Re:But...

[Bacon Bits]

Yes it does.

Re:But...

[TheRaven64]

Not the best example. Try this instead.

yeah

[Almir]

i can't help thinking sp3 will make xp so much like vista, that you might as well go the whole way. sure hope i'm wrong though.

Re:yeah

[ScrewMaster]

And ... wouldn't that be the point? I sure hope you're wrong too.

Re:yeah

[Almir]

it would, from microsoft's point of view. unless you think that vista is actually good and are using it, unlike most of us here, in which case it would be pretty bad. mind you, i'm not saying they will take all the horrible new 'features' from vista and load them onto xp, i'm just saying it might make business sense for them to put some pressure on xp users. it'd certainly get people to move on to vista sooner.

Re:yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

They wont bother adding Vista features to XP as it'll stop even more users from upgrading.

The list of new XP features includes...

  . More annoying DRM so Vista seems less crippled in comparison.
  . New product activation that requires you to authenticate XP every 19 minutes.
  . Totally new bugs & incompatibilities. They can't make Vista stable so they're making XP less stable.
  . Slow-down code. Makes XP feel as sluggish as Vista would on a 486.
  . Auto Rabbit Removal. Balmer still hates them.
  . Uber-bloat. Better than previous bloat releases (except for Vista's) and now larger.
  . Incompatability Modules. This automatically corrupts/encrypts every 9th ODF file.

Re:yeah

[RAMMS EIN]

Meh, it will still look like a christmas tree. Vista does actually look rather nice. Which is the _only_ good thing I have to say about it.

Re:yeah

[MonkWB]

Except for, ya know, the massive cost of upgrading.

Re:Hooray

[Anonymous Coward]

uh no, you fucking idiot. Now go kill yourself

Windows Product Activation?

[Paktu]

New Windows Product Activation model: no need to enter product key during setup.
I'm confused. When have you ever had to enter a product key when installing a service pack?

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[HaloZero]

2K SP3 & SP4, and XP SP1 and SP2 provided the ability to merge the service pack into the base install for the operating system. The final product is usually referred to as a 'slipstream' install - it allows you to install Windows XP without having to patch to the absolute gills, just the muck from after the latest slipstreamed service pack.

After slipstreaming SP2 into my base XP install disk, a flat-format install did take a bit longer, but device propagation was FAR, FAR IMPROVED. There were a few other niceties, but they go beyond the scope of this post. I wouldn't be surprised if they're referring to changes made in the slipstream of the base install.

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[corychristison]

It should be noted that Slipstreaming is not as daunting as most people expect... nLite can help that problem and adds a lot of 'hacks' for the install as well. These hacks I speak of are more like features, such as adding Vendor information, as well as including the Serial # right in the install. You can setup an Unattended Setup... that is, you can pre-set all of the questions Windows Setup usually asks during installation.

:-)

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[Dunbal]

Why would I need to enter the product key? After all, it comes in a .txt file called "serial" on the installation CD...oops

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[nmb3000]

nLite can help that problem and adds a lot of 'hacks' for the install as well.

nLite can also completely frak up an XP install. One specific instance that we encountered when someone in our office used nLite was the inability for anyone who was not an administrator to use USB devices. None. The only way Windows would recognize and install the drivers for things like mice, keyboards, and flash drives was if you were an administrator. I've seen others, but this was one of the most problematic.

I very strongly recommend that nobody use it in a business setting or anywhere else you care about stability. If you want to customize an aspect of the Windows install process, do your homework and learn about it. Don't trust a black box to do it all for you.

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[schnikies79]

If you just want to slipsteam, don't mess with nlite as it can really screw up an install if you don't know what you are doing, instead try autostreamer.

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[Joe The Dragon]

the DriverPacks is a good thing to add to your windows cd
http://driverpacks.net/

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[Nimey]

As the other two have said, nLite can really fuck up a Windows install. In my case, an nLite'd XP SP2 install would sometimes say it needed the XP install CD when installing Windows updates. Obviously that's Not Acceptable on an end-user's desktop.

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[DigiShaman]

I've never used nLite, but I have slipstreamed manually before. It's not hard at all! You can find a nice walk-through on performing your own slipstreaming and ISO building (bootable) here. The instructions are practically spoon-fed. =)

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[anonobomber]

If they're using windows I don't think they'll be worried about stability very much to begin with.

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[mrsmiggs]

Technical problems are not the half of it, it is actually against the license to use nlite for commercial purposes. Which smacks of please don't sue us, so doesn't really inspire confidence if anyone were considering using the software in any situation.

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[empaler]

I use it for the XP boxes we have. That's about 40 boxes. Testing is the key.
The USB problem you mention is AFAIR a setting choice when making the disc - that is, it was clearly used in a wrong manner, and clearly not thorough-tested.

I very strongly recommend that anybody in a business setting or anywhere else you care about stability thoroughly test anything and everything before deploying anything. I've made something like 30 iterations of the discs, almost every time having screwed with something that I shouldn't have - resulting in something not working properly. Rinse, repeat, etc., and you'll be a happier man because when you need to zero out an XP box, these things will, in the end, have saved you countless hours in driver installs, program installs, code typing, etc.

Re: Windows Product Activation?

[Dolda2000]

One specific instance that we encountered when someone in our office used nLite was the inability for anyone who was not an administrator to use USB devices. None. The only way Windows would recognize and install the drivers for things like mice, keyboards, and flash drives was if you were an administrator. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but that sounds completely the way it should be. I've never used Windows XP very much, but I wouldn't imagine that it would normally allow a user without administrative privileges to load arbitrary code (like drivers) into the kernel, right? Or are normal users allowed to do that if the code is signed or something?

I never really did understand why Windows doesn't come with all its own drivers installed by default, though. Why do you have to install e.g. the USB mass storage driver that comes with Windows the first time you insert a memory stick?

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[ultramkancool]

Nah, on most cracked CDs you don't even have to enter it cause they're slipstreamed... you also don't have to do any activation cracks because they're enterprise... oops :)

Re: Windows Product Activation?

[Allador]

I've never used Windows XP very much, but I wouldn't imagine that it would normally allow a user without administrative privileges to load arbitrary code (like drivers) into the kernel, right? Or are normal users allowed to do that if the code is signed or something? Non-admin users canot load drivers, start drivers, etc. However, the plug-n-play behavior that is what people see when they plug in most devices to USB ports doesnt run as the logged in user. It's a system service that handles the hardware plug n play. So when it sees a new device installed, if it recognizes it and has the drivers built into the system (ie, already loaded and trusted), it will load the drivers and mount the device, and make it available to all user sessions.

If it doesnt recognize it and/or doesnt have the drivers, then it does indeed require admin privs to install new drivers.

I never really did understand why Windows doesn't come with all its own drivers installed by default, though. It does. It comes with many tens of thousands of device drivers. One problem you run into though is with craptacular (yes, thats the technical term) consumer peripherals. They must farm out their driver software writing to 10-year old farm laborers in china or something. Most of these drver packs are good for one and only one model, so not reusable, and they're really poorly done.

So often, even if you have Model N1950 of this new digital camera, and windows ships with all drivers up to N1940 of the camera, its probable that you'll have to download drivers. Sometimes you can guess or know which drivers are compatible, but this is often plug n' pray (ie, might work, might not).

Why do you have to install e.g. the USB mass storage driver that comes with Windows the first time you insert a memory stick? You dont. The only Windows OS that doesnt support the vast majority of usb memory sticks (as mass storage) out of the box is win98 and previous.

Some specialized memory sticks, with security features, come with extra software, that can 'auto-run' when you install it, but thats just a security nightmare, and wont work for a non-admin anyway.

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[Neoprofin]

You can also use it to do al sorts of problematic things like turn off wireless support for laptops just to name one. I have to wonder if what happened there was the fault of nLite or the fault of someone tweaking knobs they shouldn't have. Any tool is dangerous in the hands of someone who doesn't know enough to know they don't know enough.

Re: Windows Product Activation?

[Dolda2000]

Why do you have to install e.g. the USB mass storage driver that comes with Windows the first time you insert a memory stick? You dont. The only Windows OS that doesnt support the vast majority of usb memory sticks (as mass storage) out of the box is win98 and previous.

Some specialized memory sticks, with security features, come with extra software, that can 'auto-run' when you install it, but thats just a security nightmare, and wont work for a non-admin anyway.
I suspect that you must have misunderstood me, because I've definitely seen that Windows XP needs to install USB-MS drivers when you plug in such a device the first time (same thing for USB-HID and others). Not that you have to install them from an external medium or something, but the "New hardware detected" tray icon shows up and tells the user that new drivers are being installed. All subsequent times that a USB-MS device is plugged in, it just shows up as a new drive immediately, without any such procedure being gone through. I can't say I know exactly what Windows is doing with the drivers at that point, but I guess it needs to "register" them or something.

Sure, it's not as if it requires any user interaction or anything, so it isn't terribly annoying, but it does require extra time the first time a device of a new class is connected, and I've just never understood why it should be necessary at all. If the drivers are installed on the disk along with the Windows installation (as they obviously are), then why aren't they registered by default? Could it be that some parts of Windows scale badly with the number of registered drivers?

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[TimTucker]

Would be nice if they included instructions for creating the bootable CD without requiring commercial software.

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[ET_Fleshy]

http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/15/

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[Axed33]

I had the exact same issue, would be interesting to figure out which setting it was that caused it. But for us the potential risks in using nlite really outweigh the benefits vs a plain old slipstreamed install.

Re: Windows Product Activation?

[Allador]

My apologies then, I did misunderstand.

I am not an OS developer, but I can speculate.

There is definitely a downside to having all conceivable drivers loaded into kernel memory at all time. It'd be pretty wasteful. No operating system does this. On many unices, you can compile certain drivers you know you need right into the kernel when you build it, and only get the ones you want.

There are also various history/configuration/preferences involved. I imagine there is just such a registry as you are thinking of, that holds things like: hardware id, last drive letter used, windows explorer preferences for that drive, etc. That way, next time you plug it in, its configured exactly the same as it was last time (where possible).

There's also hardware profiles to be dealt with. Windows keeps registries of the different hardware profiles you use (docked, undocked, etc etc). Mostly affects laptops, I imagine, but its there.

Mind you, I'm speculating here, but I imagine its mostly around issues in my first paragraph (scaling, memory).

Given your newly-specified question, I'm confused as to why it even comes up. What difference does it make? A few extra seconds of your time?

And what OS's do you see that dont do this?

Re: Windows Product Activation?

[PReDiToR]

I would imagine that it has something to do with a massive default registry, and the size of a default installation.

Imagine if your install (from scratch) was ~10GB because of drivers for things like the GoatLighter(tm) that you (might) never have heard of? Wouldn't you be pissed that your precious HDD space was taken up by such a niche driver?
Better to keep it hidden away in a .CAB file for later use.

Even on Linux you have the complication of plugging a device into a different PCI/PCMCIA slot and having a new address for the same hardware in a different place. Having just fiddled about with WiFi and the naming conventions of openSuSE's detection of hardware and having moved my BlueTooth dongle from the front of the machine to the back of the machine on Windows, they both have to ascertain exactly what it is that has been plugged in again, and if it has been, they handle it differently. On Linux the module is given new parameters, on Windows the driver is reloaded from scratch.

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[fluffy99]

Actually I use nLite quite a bit and find it useful in a business environment just because I can enable things like this. In a locked down environment, do you really want non-admins to be able to plug in new devices?

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Did you just use "frak" in a serious post? Ugh.

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[A Friendly Troll]

nLite can also completely frak up an XP install. One specific instance that we encountered when someone in our office used nLite was the inability for anyone who was not an administrator to use USB devices. None. The only way Windows would recognize and install the drivers for things like mice, keyboards, and flash drives was if you were an administrator. I've seen others, but this was one of the most problematic. It was a group policy setting of some kind (a quick search should reveal how to deal with it and what nLite did exactly). Windows allows you to disable that stuff - from all USB devices, to just USB removable storage, or even have USB drives write-protected.

Problematic? Maybe in this case, but it's very easy to think of many reasons why you wouldn't allow user accounts to install, access and use non-approved USB hardware.

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[vuffi_raa]

windows requires a serial? I have never had to enter one ....oops :)

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you're going to all that trouble, you might as well add an unattend.txt file and include the key there anyway... I haven't typed an XP key in in years.

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should they take the risk of being sued if they are not making any money from it?

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[TechForensics]

It's a safe bet the new Windows Product Activation module, and SP3, are meant to make the new, standard XP install disk something that will activate ONLY with MS-issued keys, and not those that can be generated from a reverse-engineered algorithm, and not any of the widespread working volume license keys free on the net. (Goodbye FCKGW....) (Which I always imagined stood for F*CK Gates, William...)

MS wants to make sure SP3 install disks are more under tight activation control, which is both predictable and their right; but the stressing of other 'features and benefits', it should be submitted, is disingenuous regarding their primary, self-protective motive.

Re:Windows Product Activation?

[bitrot42]

>nLite can also completely frak up an XP install. One specific instance that we encountered when someone in our office used nLite was the inability for anyone who was not an administrator to use USB devices.

I ran into this exact problem. It took me days (off and on) to figure it out. Strangely, there wasn't any reference to it, so I actually had to figure it out myself -- rare these days, it seems.

The cause is that nLite replaces a couple of windows system files so it can monkey with some of the XP setup features.

syssetup.dll
sfcfiles.dll

The original versions are signed, and the nLite versions are unsigned. Windows won't let non-admin users install hardware, even if the drivers are already on the machine, when the install files are unsigned.

Replace these files with the original MS versions from a clean XP install, and you're good to go.

I hope this helps somebody. It sure would have helped me!

Elegant MS, really elegant

[rueger]

"Windows XP SP3 build 3205 ... has been made available to testers as a part of the ...Windows Vista SP1 beta program."

God, I love this company!

Re:Elegant MS, really elegant

[ScrewMaster]

God, I love this company!

Well, between you and Steve Ballmer, that's two.

Re:Elegant MS, really elegant

[Jugalator]

I think it's really just what you choose to call it.

Obviously, since SP3 is included as part of it, it is really a Vista SP1 / Server 2008 / XP SP3 beta program.

Re:Elegant MS, really elegant

[Anonymous Coward]

"Windows XP SP3 build 3205 ... has been made available to testers as a part of the ...Windows Vista SP1 beta program."

God, I love this company!

Yeah, it's so much less confusing to
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

and get

http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/q/quagga/quagga_0.98.3-7.5_i386.deb
        Size/MD5 checksum: 1192432 e3057ed965a580381e7c15dc430df295


which should fit nicely with

Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 alias sarge


These product names are so much clearer. I can't see why Microsoft keeps naming things "vista" or "xp". That just confuses users.

Re:Elegant MS, really elegant

[Anonymous Coward]

Ballmer doesn't love Microsoft. It's just an outlet for him to channel certain eccentric proclivities and undertake other activities germane to his rarefied interests. For example, Google has a strict "no throwing chairs" policy, and Oracle explicitly states in its personnel manual that it is forbidden for high ranking company executives to publicly engage in sweaty monkey dancing. So that left Ballmer to choose between HP and Microsoft. HP did, admittedly, have a clause in its contract allowing executives to eat peoples souls, but Microsoft allowed him to eat competitors (souls included), and Bill promised never to call him "Uncle Fester" in public. The rest, as they say, is history.

Re:Elegant MS, really elegant

[ScrewMaster]

and Bill promised never to call him "Uncle Fester" in public. The rest, as they say, is history.

Can't argue with that, but personally I think Ballmer more resembles an evil Peter Boyle.

Re:Elegant MS, really elegant

[jollyreaper]

"Windows XP SP3 build 3205 ... has been made available to testers as a part of the ...Windows Vista SP1 beta program."

God, I love this company! YEEEARGH!

Re:Elegant MS, really elegant

[The One and Only]

Clearly you've never seen the dramatic conclusion to this video.

Re:Elegant MS, really elegant

[aliquis]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk

Re:Elegant MS, really elegant

[David Gerard]

That could be the most frightening thing I've seen this week.

Re:Elegant MS, really elegant

[sharkey]

Putting on the Ritz!

I hate new features.

[khasim]

I was a service pack to only fix the bugs.

If there are new features, release them as a separate "upgrade".

Having both mixed together makes testing a real pain.

Re:I hate new features.

[cindysthongs]

Totally agree - service pack = bug fix dot release = new features major release = tons of new features

Re:I hate new features.

[tacocat]

You're missing the real significance to this. They are back porting features from Vista!!! That's removing the incentive for migration from XP to VISTA on features alone. Considering the historic business model they have used, this is reason for further thought.

Dell and others have pushed Microsoft into a position where they (OEM) are allowed to continue selling XP software beyond the originally intended dates set by Microsoft. This is the first time anyone ever successfully told Microsoft what to do, including the US Government (interestingly enough).

Now that there is a continuance of XP in the market, the best thing that Microsoft can provide that customer base with secure products. If they fail to then it gives credence to the competition laying claims on security. If I remember, one of the points Microsoft was selling XP on was the security it provided above the Windows 2000/98/95 platforms. So there is something of a commitment they have made to keep it secure.

If there's a diminished reason to migrate to Vista, as already demonstrated, then what?

Re:I hate new features.

[hedwards]

You're missing the real significance to this. They are back porting features from Vista!!! That's removing the incentive for migration from XP to VISTA on features alone. Considering the historic business model they have used, this is reason for further thought.

That's one way of looking at it. Another way is that if they backport a few features it might make less technically inclined people a bit less apprehensive about getting a new computer with Vista on it.

I suspect that the features aren't going to be any of the most important ones, and will probably be ignored by XP users, but I doubt that it will really hold people back from upgrading. The main reasons people are not upgrading have little to do with the new features, and much more with things like the lack of driver support.

Re:I hate new features.

[the_fat_kid]

but is back porting features from vista a good thing?
or is it just another way to migrate all the Windows users over to an operating system that they have rejected?
how long untill they "back port" the whole DRM suite that seems to cause the most hand wringing and tooth gnashing?

now keep in mind that I'm an Mac user and don't feel that it effects me. I just wonder.

Re:I hate new features.

[suv4x4]

You're missing the real significance to this. They are back porting features from Vista!!! That's removing the incentive for migration from XP to VISTA on features alone. Considering the historic business model they have used, this is reason for further thought.

I've been thinking the same thing, and still, I don't know if pressure alone made them backport Vista features. People just want the patches rolled up in a SP. Vista security features was unexpected move.

Put this next to the toned down Vista campaign.

I have the feeling Microsoft are fully aware of the problems of Vista, and I wouldn't be too surprised to see them gradually backporting the better accepted core/security Vista features to XP until they arrive at a slimmer Vista, and throwing away or redoing the ill mouthed Vista features (such as the current allow/deny security model which often asks the wrong questions and doesn't learn, or clarify the source of the action).

If only they realized this, they wouldn't waste 5 years on grand vision ideas and arriving at an OS that's basically worse than the sum of its parts.

Vista: the spare parts OS. Backport and reuse as needed.

Re:I hate new features.

[nurb432]

Didnt they once say that it wasnt even possible to backport things since the vista kernel was 'so revolutionary' ?

Re:I hate new features.

[RAMMS EIN]

``Dell and others have pushed Microsoft into a position where they (OEM) are allowed to continue selling XP software beyond the originally intended dates set by Microsoft. This is the first time anyone ever successfully told Microsoft what to do, including the US Government (interestingly enough).''

In Soviet Russia, government controls commerce.

Re:I hate new features.

[ShieldW0lf]

That's another way of looking at it. Another way is that they were given a shitload of money from people in the large media industries, and a red carpet right into the service-provider model that they so desperately want, only people are attempting to rebel against this, so they need to find another way to deliver the locks and keys onto peoples desktops.

Re:I hate new features.

[TheRaven64]

You know, somewhere around Windows NT 4 service pack 4, they announced they would do this. No new features in service packs, just bug fixes. They even stuck to it for a few months.

Re:I hate new features.

[cHiphead]

And you're missing the REAL LIFE significance to this... IT departments everywhere are cringing in fear with thought of backporting 'Vista' fixes and features. Vista is an absolute NIGHTMARE for corporate IT. I can't wait to see what SP3 does to my clients networks, especially with features like 'black hole router detection', I foresee a lot of downtime for individual workstations. On the plus side, it will mean more billable hours for me, hell I'm only at 1580 for the year right now. ;)

Cheers.

Re:I hate new features.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I'm sorry, but you're all missing the real significance of this.

They haven't given up on making you upgrade to Vista. They aren't trying to make you "comfortable" with Vista features. The plan is to "update" XP with all the crappy, hateful features of Vista.

Don't you see? A couple more updates like this and XP is Vista!

Oh, those friggin' evil geniuses at Microsoft. They totally got you XP tree-huggers.

Re:I hate new features.

[Allador]

Funny, I'm an IT department for many companies, and I'm not cringing in fear or having nightmares over Vista.

For corporate IT, Vista is easy. Roll it out when and only when, its been tested, proven, and your organization is ready for it. Until then, just dont roll it out. Easy as pie. Now, if you've got end-users buying machines and trying to connect them to corporate resources without your control, then thats not corporate IT, thats just a bunch of people doing whatever they want.

And the black hole router detection is useful, and makes a lot of sense. If you're seeing problems with it, then it just may not be fully baked yet, and you need to give it time to settle out.

I mean geez, its not like anyone is forcing anybody to upgrade or anything. Your orgs should probably be at least considering buying vista with all new machines now, or as part of your VM purchasing, and just use the downlevel install options for now, that way you own it when you're ready.

If you're encouraging your clients to install Vista, when you know they're not ready for it, and its not ready for them, then you're a bad consultant.

If you're telling them its not ready, and they're doing it anyway, and then calling you for help, then you deserve every penny and more from those hours, cause you've got bad clients. :)

Re:I hate new features.

[Anonymous Coward]

= free debugging for Microsoft. I have yet to see one MS service pack that comes out that doesn't get at least a dozen or more "updates". So, sorry, there is nothing good about a "service" pack from MS. It just means more end users have to use their systems as test beds for Microsoft. If this XP SP3 comes out and there are no other releases from MS, I will eat my shorts ;-)

Re:I hate new features.

[__aaclcg7560]

Hmm... Wouldn't it be easier to sneak in a time-sucking loop into another patch? A user would go, "Gee.. My computer is much, much slower since Patch Tuesday. I need to buy a new Windows Vista computer!"

Re:I hate new features.

[JoelKatz]

If you look at the features that they break the rules for and introduce into service packs, you'll find they're generally features that benefit Microsoft in some way. For example, XP SP3 will likely include a Windows Media player update. That helps Microsoft push their media technologies (and media server software) over competitors. The new product activation "features", well, that's pretty obvious.

The "network access protection" features are just more face-saving because the services themselves are so insecure. It's cheaper and easier to add more firewalling than to fix the services so that they're secure. So it's not a new feature so much as a substitute for bug fixes Microsoft is not willing to do.

Re:I hate new features.

[cmacb]

I suspect that the features aren't going to be any of the most important ones,

Right.

The most important features of Vista were dropped before it ever hit the street.

Re:I hate new features.

[Anonymous Coward]

-2, Flamebait/Offtopic

Re:I hate new features.

[paganizer]

Just to be clear, you are implying that they are taking the worst parts of Vista, the DRM and hassle, and putting that into XP? this would be to make it so that there is no reason not to "upgrade" to Vista, as both products will suck pretty much equally?
Sounds about right. Darn good thing I'm sticking with Win2k until they pry it from my cold, dead hard drive.

Re:I hate new features.

[Bazar]

You mean delivering just the locks.
the reason most people hate DRM, is because even if we legally own the product, the key to open it is in someone else's hand...

Re:I hate new features.

[cHiphead]

I'm an IT consultant for many companies as well, not just small companies with under 50 users. Any serious user base (100+) is an immediate NO GO for Vista, most larger companies are running at 256-512MB ram and are subpar for Vista performance, and do not have the budget for 2007-08 to do a large rollout of new end user workstations (and a lot of the budget issue can be due to ERP costs building up due to migration from older systems such as TOMS, to JDE/Cognos, SAP, Peoplesoft, etc., see this story). Anyone concerned with the end user experience, as you should be, is not upgrading to Vista any time soon. End user training, local performance issues, network performance issues, application compatibility issues, those are the first issues that come to mind.

"Roll it out when and only when, its been tested, proven, and your organization is ready for it. Until then, just dont roll it out. Easy as pie."

Its easy to sideline quarterback this when you haven't attempted such a rollout for a client that seemed 'ready' for it, even after cost analysis and technical analysis. The beast that is Vista itself is not at all ready for a managed corporate environments with uptime requirements and user productivity concerns.

"I mean geez, its not like anyone is forcing anybody to upgrade or anything. Your orgs should probably be at least considering buying vista with all new machines now, or as part of your VM purchasing, and just use the downlevel install options for now, that way you own it when you're ready."

XP OEM support expires June of 08. All new purchases thru MS ARE bought with Vista -> XP downgrade licensing. What do you do for clients whose last Licensing agreement was for Win2k (and W2k Terminal Servers) and has NO SOFTWARE ASSURANCE. Check the costs on full SA licensing for Vista then get back to me.

Your last two sentences make no sense in the context of what I was attempting to address. A 'bad consultant' and a 'bad client' are both issues that can occur, but if you are rolling Vista out to midrange+ environments, and successfully making budget and timelines as detailed in your SoW to the client based on experience and MS guidelines, without letting technical items, user issues, network issues, and other unknowns just 'slip by' to be fixed at a later date, by all means let me know.

Re:I hate new features.

[Anonymous Coward]

I work with a small company, we ignored SA and kept Windows 2000 workstation (and server). Skipped XP, Windows 2003 (and R2), SQL 2005, etc... We'll have saved a bundle in SA costs when we next upgrade, sometime in 2009. Software Assurance is a waste of money for the small company.

Re:I hate new features.

[Nullav]

But then there would be no reason to buy Vista and MS would be wasting five years of effort and money. ...Or is someone going to make a 'woosh' post now?

Re:I hate new features.

[Allador]

I'm an IT consultant for many companies as well, not just small companies with under 50 users. Any serious user base (100+) is an immediate NO GO for Vista, most larger companies are running at 256-512MB ram and are subpar for Vista performance, and do not have the budget for 2007-08 to do a large rollout of new end user workstations (and a lot of the budget issue can be due to ERP costs building up due to migration from older systems such as TOMS, to JDE/Cognos, SAP, Peoplesoft, etc., see this story [slashdot.org]). Anyone concerned with the end user experience, as you should be, is not upgrading to Vista any time soon. End user training, local performance issues, network performance issues, application compatibility issues, those are the first issues that come to mind. For what it's worth, I agree. Sounds like many reason to make the choice NOT to go to Vista this year. There's nothing wrong with that.

Its easy to sideline quarterback this when you haven't attempted such a rollout for a client that seemed 'ready' for it, even after cost analysis and technical analysis. The beast that is Vista itself is not at all ready for a managed corporate environments with uptime requirements and user productivity concerns. I'm a little confused why you thought they were ready for it, but werent. What happened when you did a test-deploy to a small but representative part of the userbase? Were there needs/issues/requirements present for the company at large that you didnt find in the test rollouts?

And if so, sounds like maybe its not time to do the rollout. Thats a fine choice.

I'm not being a 'sideline quarterback', I'm in the same business, and face the same concerns. Thats why I havent done any significant vista rollouts yet, and have none in the plan for the moment. Other than small groups or individuals within various groups, the timing isnt right.

What do you do for clients whose last Licensing agreement was for Win2k (and W2k Terminal Servers) and has NO SOFTWARE ASSURANCE. Check the costs on full SA licensing for Vista then get back to me. Thats a tough position for the owners of that business to be in. Your job (or mine, were I in that role) would be to explain the situation to them, and the options they have, including costs, both short & long term, tangible and intangible. Then make a recommendation, or a decision tree. This was also one of those known side-effects to being in their licensing situation. There's nothing wrong with it, as long as it was come to with good information and known risks.

I apologize if I seem like I'm criticizing, I'm not. But every step along the way with making the decision to roll out vista should be made with lots of information, and known risks. Thats also why you do staged implementations. Start with a few people, the IT group, power users, etc. Then move to a larger representative group. Then start pushing out dept by dept. Take your time, figure out what goes wrong at each stage, and dont move to the next until you've solved it.

Or maybe take a different strategy. Do some test work in small groups, and then roll out as machines are refreshed. I'm not a fan of that, but its possible.

To be clear, I'm NOT doing any rollouts to anything but small groups right now, and not many of those.

But back to your original post: there's no cringing, there's no nightmares. And why would there be? There's no pressure to move, so you can do it when you're ready and not before. So take your time, make your decisions, be fully informed. If those decisions end up being not to move to vista at all for the foreseeable future, then thats great.

I just dont see the need for all the drama. You're a professional, make a plan, and work it. Make good decisions, test before you deploy. All of those things. This isnt rocket science.

But in any case, I hope your business is doing well, and growing, and all your ratios look good (assuming its your business, and you're not an employee).

Re:I hate new features.

[skogs]

I feel that way about my cellphone. I'm pretty sure that the phones are programmed with an algorithm to drop more calls and have less signal as the phone ages. My 2 cents of off-topic goodness.

Re:I hate new features.

[OriginalArlen]

Funny, I'm an IT department for many companies, and I'm not cringing in fear or having nightmares over Vista.

In that case, you're either a Linux shop, or you don't really understand what's going on...

Re:I hate new features.

[Tumbleweed]

Didnt they once say that it wasnt even possible to backport things since the vista kernel was 'so revolutionary' ?

Sure, just like they said IE couldn't be removed from Windows, and we all know how true that was.

Instead of seeing this and saying, "Might as well upgrade to Vista," I'm thinking many people might wind up saying, "Might as well upgrade to Linux." One can hope, anyway. Ubuntu 7.10 is due on the 18th, isn't it? :)

Re:I hate new features.

[rlbond86]

Except when it comes to fixing Daylight Saving Time in New Zealand.

Re:I hate new features.

[Anonymous Coward]

They did something similar to comply w/EU. They sold a copy of windows w/no WMP and no one bought it.

Re:I hate new features.

[petermgreen]

non techical home users are still getting vista whether they want it or not. In time this will mean that there is a lot of pressure on those places that want to look up to date to upgrade. There will also be pressure from hardware vendors who don't want to support both XP and vista forever.

Re:I hate new features.

[Anonymous Coward]

That all depends on whether you are a small company that wants support or needs to be able to upgrade software or receive vendor support. Sounds like you work for a pretty small organisation with stagnate IT (nothing wrong with that if you don't need it). Of course when it does come time to migrate the job and the cost will be much much greater than those with more upto date software. also SA despite what you think works better for a lot of small orgs as it spreads the cost and makes the cost for X number of years a known quantity, easy to budget, easy to do your taxes, easy to plan ahead.

Re:I hate new features.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, for Higher Ed. super user Grad students and PhD candidates that I work with, Vista IS a nightmare. Why?

Vista security. There is no middle-ground, or none that I've adequately seen, with regard to UAC.

Most of my users have laptops, and are part of the Administrator group. They travel, and in the event of something breaking, they'll need access to every facet of the machine when I walk them through how to fix it. They also install apps as they see fit, and sometimes use their own hardware, which would require ability to add drivers.... Yes this is a grey area for the use of the machine, as it's state property, however we take the view that your job should not limit the avialable useful tools which can be extended to other parts of your life.

File transfer. My users sync data to a network share. Sometimes COPIOUS amounts of data, which Vista has known issues for (try 3-4 GB a day; yes, THAT MUCH changes daily for some of them). When I can put a Vista machine and an XP machine (see IDENTICAL spec'd hardware) side by side, copying a large amount of data to its own 1 of 2 identicial HW servers with equivalent running loads on servers, and PC's, on the same network, and the XP machine transfers it twice as fast? READ THAT 2X!!! There is a serious issue with Vista. Period.

Until MS gets their head out of their ass and fixes some of the most BASIC tasks that a user does, Vista overall, fails from our perspective.

In all 50+ user machines I service, 1 runs Vista. It was a test case, which one of our Directors sought use of. He travels a lot, and mainly uses it for email, and to compose documents. He doesn't work with a whole lot of data, which is a good thing. For him, Vista is fine. For ANY other user, including the other Director who generates at least 5GB of data a week, not a chance.

Re:I hate new features.

[Anonymous Coward]

in Capitalist America, Commerce controls government

Re:I hate new features.

[SlowMovingTarget]

So this completes project Shoehorn, maybe now they can get back on track building the Longhorn they wanted. Remember, the U.S. Government and several major customers arm-wrestled them into making their ship dates. So Microsoft did the only thing it could reasonably do, short of saying "No" and breaking their contracts, they cut features.

We should see "Longhorn" in the "Vista" before us, I suppose. What should've been there? How about:

• Avalon: A completely new GUI framework, available with .Net, accessible through XAML... We only see pieces of it.
• WinFS: File System == Database. You'll have metadata coming out 'yer ears! This would have been good, but this was one of the last things they pulled before finalizing the feature set of Vista.
• Indigo: An SOA framework making easy work of building service-oriented applications. (Don't get me wrong, I'm a Java guy, but I still remember what Microsoft did to GUI programming with VB. For better or worse, it pulled GUI client-server into the reach of a lot more people, and Indigo could possibly have done that for SOA on the Microsoft platform. As it is... SCA looks a lot more palatable.)

What we have instead is all the DRM crap and a lobotomized security system (WinFS would've made it a bit more real), and fragments of the GUI system. XP SP3 is Shoehorn.

Re:I hate new features.

[Wikipedia]

I'll sum it up for you, VISTA SUCKS

Re:I hate new features.

[XPACT]

I can second that I had an "Ericsson T28 World" phone back in the days, and that was exactly the thing that happened with it.

Re:I hate new features.

[spxero]

That's interesting- I used the heck out of my T28 World (even though I never did any World Traveling with it...) and never saw any performance or speed downgrade whatsoever. The only reason I replaced it was for the T68 (ahh, colored pixels!!!)

Re:I hate new features.

[Anonymous Coward]

So then it's official. The kids really are smarter than the adults. I just don't get when the transformation happens. At what age do the adults become such idiots?

Re:I hate new features.

[lordSaurontheGreat]

Funny, I'm an IT department for many companies, and I'm not cringing in fear or having nightmares over Vista.
You must be new there.

Re:I hate new features.

[Greg.Rodden]

No its just the states.
I went there recently and cell phone coverage is terrible. I'd say more drop outs are due to the ever increasing saturation of cell phone networks over there.

Re:I hate new features.

[tigersha]

I still have one and could get nobody to just take it from me. Reason? The total suck-ass horrifying user interface from hell. Want one?

Re:I hate new features.

[Lennie]

I'm not sure if it's an age thing. It's people getting stuck in there ways and being open to alternatives at before that.

Re:I hate new features.

[tacocat]

I understand your point but I flatly disagree with it on one point. I do not believe it is the home user who sets the impetus for OS migration. Rather this is determined by the office environment.

Basis for this -- Apple appealed to the Academics and IBM appealed to the Corporations. That's a starting point.

When you consider that a majority of people who use computers spend more time on them at work than at home (yes, this is an assumption) they tend to have a familiarity with the computer at work more. They also have, to varying degrees, support in the office in getting help with the various software. This could be formalized support or just the guy in the next cube. It also helps if you can take work home over the weekend and have the same software you need there as here.

The other point to consider is the recent news that you can buy MS Office and OS in China for $1. The reason for this is pretty simple. If Wednesday morning China decides to mandate that everyone use OpenOffice for all their business, government, and personal computing needs (or at least ODF) then you have a problem with all the companies doing business in China. When they send/receive documents to their Chinese Counterparts they have to either convert the documentation from .doc to ODF and hope it works correctly -- potentially munging months of work, or they can simply install OpenOffice on their Windows machines and learn to use OpenOffice.

If they chose the latter, then shortly after that the use of .doc format will effectively become deprecated because no one really wants to try and support two of the same applications. (how many people are fluent with VI and EMACS?). By this point, Microsoft will have lost the Office platform freeing up the world to reconsider their OS platform as well. This doesn't dictate anyone will migrate from Windows OS, but it certainly removes the lockin. But the Office makes a lot more money than the OS.

The only reason companies migrate from version to version is based on two reasons. I can no longer get (official) support for the current version (or purchase new hardware with same). I am pulled into a newer version because my business partnerships are no longer using the same software versions. Otherwise we would all be usine WordPerfect 6.1

Re:I hate new features.

[Anonymous Coward]

Another way of looking at it is that they are so determined to shove these features down our throats that they are going to make them the price of continuing stability for people who decided that they didn't want Vista. Bill has had his vision, and no one on Earth is allowed to disagree with him.

Re:I hate new features.

[jonadab]

> Wouldn't it be easier to sneak in a time-sucking loop into another patch?
> A user would go, "Gee.. My computer is much, much slower since Patch Tuesday.
> I need to buy a new Windows Vista computer!

That risks bad PR if it gets out. Instead, just sign a cooperative agreement with Symantec to give free three-month trials of NAV to all current XP users. That ought to do just about the same thing, but you don't have to worry about being discovered, because you can publically admit to rolling out three-month free NAV trials and say it was for better security, which is a big PR win.

Re:I hate new features.

[XPACT]

I could have it I love the interface and the features of my T28 World. No other cell phone has more intuitive menu (I had Motorola, Nokia and Samsung)

Slashdotted

[jmpeax]

A link to microsoft.com would have been better - less likely to suffer the slashdot effect!

Never mind. I should get on with work I suppose.

Re:Slashdotted

[thsths]

> Never mind. I should get on with work I suppose.

Work? Didn't you get the memo that Sunday is off?

Re:Slashdotted

[Ynot_82]

Link to MS KB page for XP SP3

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=832671

Re:Slashdotted

[Ynot_82]

oops,
I'm a retard and deserve modding down....

Re:Slashdotted

[bassgoonist]

Well, you WERE close...I can't blame you :-p

Re:Slashdotted

[jmpeax]

Welcome to my life :-(

Re:Slashdotted

[groslyunderpaid]

I have moderator points, but the list seems to be incomplete. I see "offtopic" "flaimbait" and others, but I can't find the "-100, fuc|1ng retarded" option...

Re:Slashdotted

[complete loony]

It's Monday here in AU you insensitive clod.

Re:Slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Noone would have clicked such a link.

Re:question

[ahaning]

Please take a hint from your buddy.

I would like to note something

[Daimanta]

The Windows Server 2008/Windows Vista SP1 beta program is not in charge of Gundam.

Re:I would like to note something

[Anonymous Coward]

In soviet russia meme start you!

Re:I would like to note something

[zerojoker]

--verbose please... I don't get this one...

Re:I would like to note something

[Nimey]

fnord!

Re:I would like to note something

[Mister Transistor]

Recent slashdot article about Japanese agri officials editing Wikipedia entries... search for it...

Re:I would like to note something

[yanos]

Read me

For those too lazy, apparently some people over the ministry of agriculture of Japan were caught editing the Gundam page on Wikipedia while they were supposed to work. Hence the phrase "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam".

Re:I would like to note something

[blind biker]

The who IS? (check sig)

Re:is IE7 included? YES

[Anonymous Coward]

yes it's included. as is Windows Media Player 11

Vista Sound

[QBasicer]

My favourite feature of Vista is it's sound system. The ability to change the volume quickly and easily per program is probably the best (and perhaps only) good feature of Vista. Does Linux even have anything like that? I can't check the link because it appears to be down, and the Coral Cache link doesn't want to load :\.

Re:Vista Sound

[pizzach]

I'm sorry, but knowing nothing about Windows Vista that sounds like an extremely stupid feature. If I actually saw the implementation, I would probably thinking along the same lines as you. But until then, your words made me question the interface design of general windows programs that should have their own volume sliders anyway. 9_6

Re:Vista Sound

[JustNiz]

Actually its one of the changes for Vista that I hate. I just want one overall volume control, not on a per-app basis.

Re:Vista Sound

[Aladrin]

I haven't used Vista yet, but that is the only compelling feature I've heard so far. I would -love- to control sound per-program. As a gamer, I'm used to having to adjust my sound levels for each game, and that's great. But for non-games, this features doesn't exist. Winamp (and other media players) has its own control, but quite often that control is just a shortcut to the main volume control, messing up the volume for other apps. If I want to classical music softly in the background, it can be a pain to get it all going.

Or perhaps I have a language tutor, and I want the volume higher than normal so I can hear it... Or maybe a phone app that I want to have higher... But everything else normal.

I can think of tons of problems that can only be solved by beating the app developer over the head with a crowbar or per-app volume control.

Again, Vista finally has a feature I want. I wonder how long until it exists in KDE now, so I can stop feeling like Vista might be the answer?

Re:Vista Sound

[musikit]

i understand why some users would prefer one over the other however until someone standardizes on a file format besides WAV that includes some form of decibal rating in it this feature is a necessity. there is no constant level of sound between wav files (and CDs and DVDs) that will allow me to say that i want sound played at 60 db. it is completely frustrating to have 1 application have a wav file that deafens you at the volume you like for other application's wav files.

i'm not that big a sound engineer to even be able to build such a wave file system however i would very much like to set in my operating system that i want wav files played at no louder then XX db and if the wav file is above that the sound is auto reduced in volume to that db rating. at the same time i would very much enjoy a minimum sound level as well to say the minimum sound of my system is 20 db and if a sound is too soft it is auto increased to play at that db rating.

im actually surprised the hearing impaired havent asked for this as a handicap accessible feature.

Re:Vista Sound

[QBasicer]

It works by giving in addition to the main volume slider in the mixer/taskbar, providing a slider for each individual program using sound, like this picture. The way, you can have Gaim/Pidgin sounds quite low, while you listen to relaxing music, but are waiting urgently for that important e-mail notification. I've played games where the sound is quite low to begin with, but then I get a message on my IM client, which seems fit to play a deafingly loud sound. IMHO, it's the only thing that Vista got right. I'm not sure how it works, but sound in Linux seems to be flaky at best.

Re:Vista Sound

[nuzak]

> knowing nothing about Windows Vista that sounds like an extremely stupid feature.

Sounds like you've distilled the standard slashdot response to any Vista article.

Of course as soon as Linux copies the feature, then it's a great idea.

Re:Vista Sound

[Lennie]

The pulseaudio sound daemon does this.

screenshot

It allows for setting the volume per audio source.

Re:Vista Sound

[Anonymous Coward]

One issue though with using a real world unit like dB SPL or similar is that the computer doesn't actually know what signal level translates into what SPL. A laptop outputting everything its got may only producing only 50dB max on the built in speakers meanwhile plug the same system into a stadium sound system and suddently its 120dB or more, yet the computer has no way of knowing this.

Also, look to CD's for another reason as to why this wouldn't work; The dynamic range of a CD is over 90dB, quite capable of carrying a huge range of sound. Yet the loudness of music recordings is pushed so high that even with this dynamic range the signal is forced to clip. http://www.mindspring.com/~mrichter/dynamics/dynamics.htm

Re:Vista Sound

[tepples]

One issue though with using a real world unit like dB SPL or similar is that the computer doesn't actually know what signal level translates into what SPL. Nor does your computer know what RGB value translates into what intensity of each primary on your PC's display. That's what colorimeters are for.

The dynamic range of a CD is over 90dB, quite capable of carrying a huge range of sound. Yet the loudness of music recordings is pushed so high that even with this dynamic range the signal is forced to clip. The loudness war is partly the fault of underpowered op-amps driving the headphone connector in portable CD players.

Re:Vista Sound

[drawfour]

Actually its one of the changes for Vista that I hate. I just want one overall volume control, not on a per-app basis.

Which you still have. Apps default to the same level as the "Device volume" unless you change them. Basically, each volume per app is a percentage of the volume level of the device. If you set an app's volume to being the same level as the device volume, as you increase/decrease the device volume, the volume for the app increases/descreases as well. If you set an app's volume to being half the level as the device volume, then it will always be half the device volume. If you never open the Mixer control, all your volumes will be the same for all your apps, which is the device level.

Re:Vista Sound

[FoolsGold]

Actually its one of the changes for Vista that I hate. I just want one overall volume control, not on a per-app basis.

There is: the left-most slider on the mixer app is for the global speaker, which affects all other audio. Change that and you change the overall volume.

Re:Vista Sound

[petermgreen]

One issue though with using a real world unit like dB SPL or similar is that the computer doesn't actually know what signal level translates into what SPL. A laptop outputting everything its got may only producing only 50dB max on the built in speakers meanwhile plug the same system into a stadium sound system and suddently its 120dB or more, yet the computer has no way of knowing this.
True but that doesn't really matter, his main point was to allow the user to define a minimum and maximum intensity and have any sounds that fell outside of those bounds adjusted. Using DB relative to peak output would work just as well.

However for general apps it is not very practical because you can't know how loud a sound will be until after it has finished so per app volume control is a reasonable compromise (basically working on the assumption that all the sounds output by one app will be output at a similar level)

Re:Vista Sound

[Kaenneth]

Unfortunetly, I've read that all audio processing is done on the CPU in Vista, making any fancy high-end audio cards near useless...

Hopefully, it's just a matter of a new driver model, not a capability removed.

Re:Vista Sound

[X0563511]

That's called a compressor. Hook one up to your speakers and problem solved, no matter what operating system (or device for that matter) sends audio to them.

I smell a niche market developing...

Re:Vista Sound

[guruevi]

Yes, Linux allows you to do it (Alsa or Jack), as does Mac OS X (CoreAudio). Most programs don't have it right in the GUI unless it's a media player of some sorts because it's (imho) a useless feature for any other program unless you're a power (audio) users and those know how to get it done correctly.

Re:Vista Sound

[TheRaven64]

Does Linux even have anything like that?

I can't speak for Linux, but FreeBSD has. Since 4.x (I think), the sound device has been multiplexed in to virtual instances, so you can point an application at /dev/dsp.1, and it mixes all of these in-kernel. With FreeBSD 5, this was tidied up a bit, so /dev/dsp was just a pointer to whatever spare vchan was next in line to be used. With 7, each vchan got its own volume settings, so you can assign a different volume level to individual programs.

There are also horrible hacks like userspace sound daemons which kind-of let you do this, typically adding a lot of latency into the sound path. You can control the sound level of each program, but only if that program supports the sound daemon (and often each sound daemon needs its own vchan).

Re:Vista Sound

[Ant P.]

Most of the programs I've used in Linux have their own independent volume settings. Flash is one of the annoying exceptions (as usual), but worse are the ones that can control either their own volume or the system volume with one slider depending on how it's configured. I've deafened myself a few times from that...

Re:Vista Sound

[speaker of the truth]

Actually it does sound like a great feature for Vista, and I'd certainly be happy if the Linux distros copied it. I don't know often I'd use it (I almost always have sound turned off), but you don't know what you'll use until you have it.

Re:Vista Sound

[Anonymous Coward]

I would definitely use this feature... the ONLY sound I want coming out of my speakers is what I tell the computer to play. This normally means only audio and video players, and maybe my IM client. The first programs to have their sound disabled would be ALL web browsers and Flash. Not much pisses me off more than those sites that force the use of Flash to see... and insist on playing loud sounds/music in the silence of night. Especially when the speakers are turned up loud from the last time listening to music. Or while I'm actually listening to music at the time. This would be a very welcome feature, and is one (of the *very* few) Vista features I would actually find useful.

Re:Vista Sound

[Anonymous Coward]

It would almost be a useful feature - if only it didn't come at the cost of using the network drivers at full speed. (/. article)

As it is, for almost everything else, it doesn't matter. Media players have their own volume controls and have for ages, making the feature completely worthless if it did work and downright harmful because of the aforementioned bug.

Re:Vista Sound

[psyph3r]

sounds great to me...play any sound and boom network performance drops by 90%. wtf?

WGA will doom it.

[Deathlizard]

If it's got WGA like Windows Vista? Then no thanks.

That's the only reason we're staying away from Vista, and if this new activation is anything like that then it's SP2 until they drop support for it, and maybe something else (Linux, OSX) after that.

I've said my reasons we stay away from Vista In my Journal. I'm sure we're not the only workplaces saying the same thing. Especially if the computers are not anchored to the network and are off the network for months at a time like our systems are.

Re:WGA will doom it.

[alexhs]

if it's got WGA like Windows Vista? Then no thanks.

That's the only reason we're staying away from Vista, And I guess it was the same reason to keep w2k and stay away from xp ? Why are you using xp then ?
If this is your only reason, you better switch right now, as applications will soon require this sp anyway, or require vista.

Re:WGA will doom it.

[Paul_Hindt]

That's exactly why its all Windows 98 all the time over here...none of those gosh darned security checks. Well, no security whatsoever but that's besides the point.

Re:WGA will doom it.

[Deathlizard]

Why are you using xp then

At the time we made the OS decision, We were running Windows 98/ME for whatever reason and XP was out for 5-6 months. Since we knew 2000 was on the way out and XP didn't have WGA or activation at the time for corporate accounts, we didn't see any reason not to switch to XP.

Eventually WGA came out, but it was still optional with corporate accounts. WSUS servers don't send out or receive the WGA updates Even if you wanted them. You would only get the updates by going directly to Windows Update or if you did not setup a WSUS server on the local PC's.

Right now, from the sound of this article, it looks like SP3 is going to try to push Volume Activation 2.0 on XP users, where previously Volume Activation 1.0 was used. and our IT depatrment does not want to deal with MAK keys or KMS servers.

Re:WGA will doom it.

[Deathlizard]

Ok Whats worse then.

1) A Key Stealing virus infects all of your Windows 98 Machines, and you'll need to clean them, and at worse reimage them.

or

2) A Key Stealing virus infects all of your Windows XP Machines, and you'll need to clean them, and at worse reimage them, and to top it all off, change their XP key a few days down the road because MS thinks your a pirate.

Don't think it can't happen or can't be done since you're patched? it's easy. Send an E-mail to John Q Igoramus, which he will promply open and attempt to open an attachment in the email telling him that his daughter posted something lewd in her myspace account and to click here to see it, only that what he clicked on was a Trojan Horse, which promptly posts your corporate XP key to freexpwarez.com, which is used by 1,000,000 people to get free XP, which MS detects and promptly locks out all your corporate PC with a "You are a pirate" message.

Exploits just automates the process. Social Engenneering works just as well.

Re:WGA will doom it.

[Allador]

Send an E-mail to John Q Igoramus, which he will promply open and attempt to open an attachment in the email telling him that his daughter posted something lewd in her myspace account and to click here to see it, only that what he clicked on was a Trojan Horse, which promptly posts your corporate XP key to freexpwarez.com, which is used by 1,000,000 people to get free XP, which MS detects and promptly locks out all your corporate PC with a "You are a pirate" message. If your John Q Ignoramus users are running their systems as local admins, then you probably deserve some pain. Okay, you dont really deserve it, but you'll get no sympathy.

I realize this is slightly aside from your point, but any corporate IT shops where this would work arent doing their jobs.

Re:WGA will doom it.

[fluffy99]

You don't need admin rights to read the product key in WXP. (That is unless you're a savy net admin and pushed a policy to change the access rights on the appropriate registry keys). You do need admin rights by default in Vista though.

Re:WGA will doom it.

[omfglearntoplay]

Or the company isn't doing it's "job" by giving enough man power to IT, paying for tons of custom software rewrites, paying for employee education, etc.

Re:WGA will doom it.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Especially if the computers are not anchored to the network and are off the network for months at a time like our systems are." - by Deathlizard (115856) on Sunday October 07, @04:32PM (#20890549)

That's what you get for running Linux: machines that get "rooted" (& in your case, just "fall offline")!

See here for more information:

Cracked Linux Boxes Used to Wield Windows Botnets

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/05/1234217

Salient quote (From the article & security/network personnel involved):

"eBay's chief information and security officer] noticed an unusual trend when taking down phishing sites. 'The vast majority of the threats we saw were rootkitted Linux boxes, which was rather startling. We expected Microsoft boxes"

Hilarious!

And best feature of all!

[Chas]

"Are you SURE you wouldn't like to upgrade to Windows Vista?"

[Upgrade Now] [Upgrade RIGHT NOW] [FUBAR Existing System]

Re:And best feature of all!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point of putting 3 buttons if they all do the same thing ... ?

Better then most Service packs...

[webmaster404]

At least this one adds functionality rather then just fixing bugs that would have already been fixed in the Alpha had it been an open source project.... I just hope this doesn't include more DRM, but it wouldn't affect me as I ditched Windows for Ubuntu about 4 months ago.

Re:Hooray

[Anonymous Coward]

You are attempting to First Post. Cancel or Fail miserably?

Conspiracy to make activiation required

[jihadist]

It's a giant conspiracy to make activation codes required. Now that XP is more popular than Vista, the corporate drones want to get us all hooked in to their required purchasing plan, even though studies show that 97% of people running Windows stole it because it was easy.

Full text

[sr243]

Following our coverage of the Windows XP SP3 beta leak almost a month ago in August, here's some more info on the official beta, which just had its first authorized distributable released earlier today. Say hello to Windows XP SP3, build 3205!

While the newly-released build and the one leaked a month ago (Build 3180) may share the same name, we can exclusively reveal that they are not identical releases. This release, also shipped as windowsxp-kb936929-sp3-x86-enu.exe, is 334.2 megabytes and has been made available to tier-one Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 beta testers. Hashes are as follows:

CRC: 56e08837
MD5: c8c24ec004332198c47b9ac2b3d400f7

Along with the standalone installer redistributables (in English, Japanese, and German), Microsoft also provided the usual release notes and a list of all the hotfixes included in this release. Contrary to popular belief, Windows XP SP3 does ship with all-new features - not just patches and hotfixes, most of them backported from Windows Vista:

        * New Windows Product Activation model: no need to enter product key during setup. Thank God for that!
        * Network Access Protection modules and policies have been brought to XP after being one of the more-well-received features in Windows Vista. You can read more about NAP here.
        * New Microsoft Kernel Mode Cryptographic Module - the Windows XP SP3 kernel now includes an entire module that provides easy access to multiple cryptographic algorithms and is available for use in kernel-mode drivers and services.
        * New "Black Hole Router" detection - Windows XP SP3 can detect and protect against rogue routers that are discarding data.

Windows XP SP3 is compatible with all versions of Windows x86, included Embedded, Fundamentals, Start, Professional, Media Center, and Home Editions.

Windows XP SP3 now contains 1,073 patches/hotfixes, not including those in previous service packs. Of the 1,073 included updates, 114 are for security-related issues. The remainder are updates to performance & reliability, bugfixes, improvements to kernel-mode driver modules, and many BSOD fixes.

As with Service Pack 2, these include both previously publicly-available updates (whether through support.microsoft.com or via Windows Update) as well as any and all privately-redistributed updates for select customers or partners with specific problems/scenarios.

The first included update: KB123456 (April 7, 2006). The last: KB942367 (September 29, 2007).

We're checking with our MS contacts if we can provide you with the actual comprehensive list of updates included in Windows XP SP3, along with their descriptions and KB article links.

Protection against black hole routers?

[adam613]

So that when Windows wants to secretly download an update or send your data back to Microsoft, and you prevent them from doing so at the router level, they'll be able to detect it?

Re:Protection against black hole routers?

[pchan-]

So that when Windows wants to secretly download an update or send your data back to Microsoft, and you prevent them from doing so at the router level, they'll be able to detect it? No. A black hole router is a router that incorrectly handles MTUs that are bigger than it can pass. That is, instead of fragmenting the packets, it just silently drops them. This makes for some very unreliable connections as only the bigger packets get dropped and smaller ones get through. This is usually a problem at the ISP level and has nothing to do with Windows updates. I now return you to your regularly scheduled tin foil hat.

Re:Protection against black hole routers?

[Kjella]

Hey, wait your saying that Microsoft is not only fixing their own problems, but are also fixing crappy products other companies make? Better introduce those kinds of news gently, some of the slashbots may suffer an apoplectic shock.

Re:Protection against black hole routers?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

A black hole router is a router that incorrectly handles MTUs that are bigger than it can pass.

The term "blackhole router" has a completely different meaning these days. A lot of ISPs intentionally claim to have a route for traffic and drop the traffic as a way of filtering malicious traffic, like DDoS attacks. Technically this may be "incorrect" but it keeps servers running an accessible during a DDoS attack and is a vital tool for network security engineers at tier 1 and 2 ISPs. How this feature will affect the situation depends upon how they implemented it and what it actually does.

Re:Protection against black hole routers?

[Super_Z]

Well, according to this article: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0704.mspx ,
PMTU black hole router detection seems to have been included in Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003.

So I guess it was a feature of the BSD TCP/IP stack they put in there?

As an aside, the same article describes the alternaltive way to change the IP MTU: Edit the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} registry key.
You just gotta love those keynames.

Re:Protection against black hole routers?

[EvanED]

Hey, wait your saying that Microsoft is not only fixing their own problems, but are also fixing crappy products other companies make?

MS doing this the main reason for a lot of Windows's problems.

They have so much crap to deal with from crummy programs that it'd blow your mind. And for the most part, they all still work, right down to most old DOS programs.

Raymond Chen talks about this a lot in his blog. Example. Or did you know that Windows 95 -- what should have been 4.0 -- reported it was 3.95, because saying 4.0 would have broken hundreds of programs?

MS is no stranger to fixing other people's broken code... in fact, they are probably the best in the business at it. It's only unfortunate that they are less good at fixing their own.

Re:Protection against black hole routers?

[NoNickNameForMe]

If your definition of blackhole routing is correct, then won't XP SP3 make life easier for botnets to launch DDos attacks, since the XP network stack would just drop the blackholed routes? I hope it's not a supposed 'fix' leading to an even greater problem.

Re:Protection against black hole routers?

[Technician]

So that when Windows wants to secretly download an update or send your data back to Microsoft, and you prevent them from doing so at the router level, they'll be able to detect it?

It looks like it. Wow, they are going to detect and blacklist my router simply because the DHCP range it provides is null-routed to keep the leaches away. It works if I set a proper static IP in the permitted range. I wonder if it would ban my router before I could get in and change to a static IP address.

Re:Protection against black hole routers?

[BuGless]

Routers rarely drop those packets silently. The largest problem stems from PCs running firewall software and the self-appointed "firewalladministrator" subsequently feeling all snug and safe when he confidently *blackholes* incoming ICMP traffic under the assumption that it is a Good Thing (tm) when you are in "stealthmode" where others can't even ping you.

What they're forgetting (well, actually, they never knew) is that blocking incoming ICMP traffic also blocks MTU notifications from those routers that don't fragment (according to your own instructions in the TCP stream). Consequently you'll never know when you're sending with too large an MTU.

In the old days MTUs could be anywhere between 576 and 1500 (due to SLIP and PPP connections in the path). The current proliferation of VPNs makes this issue relevant once again.

Re:Protection against black hole routers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think he's the top designer at microsoft who implemented that feat. Maybe we shouldn't make conclusions of his possibly correct definition ?

Re:Protection against black hole routers?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to make up your own wild-ass conspiracies, why don't you just make up the answers too?

The only thing that's interesting

[Opportunist]

most of which have been backported from Windows Vista.

Including DirectX 10? Few things about Vista are interesting besides that.

Re:The only thing that's interesting

[n dot l]

Not a chance. MS has chosen to tie DX10 to their new display driver model (they completely rewrote the line between user-space DX and kernel-space DX), which is tied to changes in the kernel...which interacts with all sorts of other shit in Vista (etc, etc). It's not that it can't be implemented without the new driver model (after all, NVIDIA's already supporting DX10 equivalent OpenGL extensions on XP - and Linux), just that it has been implemented that way. There's no way MS will spend money doing a massive re-write/back-port of DX10...especially since that's one of the main selling points of Vista (now that an actual DX10 game has been released).

Re:The only thing that's interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

the ties are artificial.

and would be trivial for microsoft to create an xp version of directx10.

make no mistake.

Re:The only thing that's interesting

[TheRaven64]

It's not that it can't be implemented without the new driver model (after all, NVIDIA's already supporting DX10 equivalent OpenGL extensions on XP - and Linux), just that it has been implemented that way. There's no way MS will spend money doing a massive re-write/back-port of DX10 They might if game designers start looking at nVidia's OpenGL extensions and thinking 'if we used OpenGL, we could get the same graphics quality as DirectX 10 with the same potential audience as DirectX 9. Maybe we could even do a Mac port cheaply...'

Re:The only thing that's interesting

[n dot l]

Already happening. The biggest things holding GL back are the ridiculously hard to read specifications and some (minor) runtime inefficiency.

In terms of documentation, some of the extensions read something like this: "if feature bit A is enabled then stage B of the OpenGL pipeline (see section c.d - of the OpenGL Specification version e.f, augmented by extension G) is replaced by block H as described in this extension - except when bit I is also enabled, or bit J is disabled, or the currently bound K is not L (subject to interatction with extension M, if it is present), or when rendering N or O (unless option P has been specified)." It's incredibly annoying to have to parse that kind of language when all you want to know is whether you screwed up or it's a driver bug. Hopefully OpenGL 3.0 helps here.

As for inefficiency, this mostly relates to things like the difference between HLSL and GLSL/ARB*p shaders. In the former instance it's required that you compile the shaders into an intermediate, binary, assembly-like form that the drivers then compile into device code. This means that string parsing and the first set of optimizations (like dead code removal) happen offline. GL requires that you hand it shaders in raw string format, which means the driver has to do more work at load time. Multiplied by several hundred shaders this can add several seconds of load time (which is important when writing tames) that DX doesn't otherwise impose (though there are ways to hide this latency). There's also more minor issues like the fact that DX gives the driver the opportunity to precompute the data input to shader bindings (vertex declarations in DX9, input assembler objects in DX10) whereas GL forces the driver to do this at draw time.

Not that either issue makes it impossible to make great games with GL (Id has proven that ages ago, obviously), it just makes it a bit more of a pain and the less-than-obvious choice when your target platform is Windows.

(my appologies if this is a dupe to an earlier reply I thought I made to this post but am unable to see on /. - I assume I F'd up and didn't actually hit submit before I closed my browser, but I thought I'd mention it on the off chance that two similar posts suddenly show up)

Re:The only thing that's interesting

[mgblst]

Pick the game player.

Not because there is anything more interesting in Vista, just that nobody else cares about anything in Vista, including DirectX 10.

DirectX 10 support?

[shawnmchorse]

It might actually get some traction that way, if it's not just being used to shove Windows Vista at people...:p

New features, backported from Vista ?

[Hymer]

But didn't Microsoft say that it is impossible to backport features to XP from Vista due to major differences in the system ?
...and since it is possible, will we be getting DirectX 10 on XP too ?
...and if not, why not ?
--
btw. how can this be good for Vista ?

Re:New features, backported from Vista ?

[realdodgeman]

It will make XP slower and it will feel more like Vista. So everybody will go "hey, now the difference is so small, I could just upgrade and get DX10 anyway".

Re:New features, backported from Vista ?

[Tim C]

since it is possible, will we be getting DirectX 10 on XP too ?

You see a few features backported from one OS to another, and immediately assume that they all can be with just as much ease. Interesting.

Re:New features, backported from Vista ?

[jollyreaper]

But didn't Microsoft say that it is impossible to backport features to XP from Vista due to major differences in the system ? I guess David Allan Coe is going to have to revise his song.

Well the motorcycle club had a party,
And all the young virgins were there.
And I found a blonde with little bitty titties
And a pretty yellow ribbon in her hair.
Then I told her the four biggest lies in the world,
The ones my Daddy first told me,
And that was the beginning of my sexual life
And the end of my fantasy.

I said, "This'll only hurt for a little while,
I'll only put the head of it in.
I promise that I'll never try to cum in your mouth.
It's impossible to backport features to XP from Vista due to major differences in the system."

Network Access Protection

[mugenjou]

Network Access Protection modules and policies have been brought to XP after being one of the more-well-received features in Windows Vista.

What exactly does that mean, is this only the client for the Non-Windows-and-old-Windows-Client-Lockout-feature of Windows Server 2008?
How can it be well received in Vista if Server 2008 is not yet out, and who well-received it? Or is there more to this feature?

Re:Network Access Protection

[BrentH]

This 'feature', called NTLMv2 or something like that, is already present in Vista. How Microsoft argues that it is well recieved I can't understand, as I can view Vista-shaer with my Linux box....

adding gasoline to the fire

[v1]

Microsoft Kernel Mode Cryptographic Module

so now those viruses that morph and encrypt themselves to prevent detection ... we can't search for the little bit of code at the start that decrypts them because they'll just use a nice convenient windows API.

Lovely.

Re:adding gasoline to the fire

[owlstead]

Don't be an idiot. The libraries that do this have been within Windows for ages. Besides, you can easily use XOR encryption if you just want to hide something. Not really secure, but you'll have to do crypto-analysis to get to the code anyway. Hell, you could use ROT-13. Are you going to look for assembly XOR or ADD routines? You'll probably find a few. Calls to this specific Windows API will be much easier to find.

I've been trying to find out what cryptographic features have been added to the FIPS security module in SP3. I'll be very surprised if there finally is some Elliptic Curve support or anything like that. It seems that .NET has some support for them, but Windows unfortunately still seems to lack support, even though the market is starting to show clear interest in EC crypto.

Anyway, the only thing I can find using Google is some page of Microsoft that's 7 years old. For the same FIPS module - for W2K of course. Does anyone have a link to more recent information? Currently there is little to discuss (unless you mention the missing PKCS#11 support by this arrogant monopolist).

Re:adding gasoline to the fire

[suv4x4]

so now those viruses that morph and encrypt themselves to prevent detection ... we can't search for the little bit of code at the start that decrypts them because they'll just use a nice convenient windows API.

The cryptographic API-s in Windows, just like the cryptographic API-s in OSX and Linux, are used for hashing and crypoting data using industry standard algorithms.

This is what IE uses for SSL sessions, for example.

Let me ask you something: why do you have to speak about things you have no clue about and make a fool of yourself in front of us? Yes, actually by spreading moronic FUD, you make people listen less to legitimate worries about the Windows OS.

Re:adding gasoline to the fire

[groslyunderpaid]

Why aren't things hidden more often in the alternate data streams? You can hide text in file, for instance, like so: c:\> vol > vol.txt c:\> dir > dir.txt c:\> type vol.txt > dir.txt:secretarea now the contents of vol.txt are also stored in an alternate data stream in dir.txt the dir.txt filesize does not change, and by using type or even notepad you cannot see what is in the alternate data stream (ADS), but a simple c:\> more dir.txt:secretarea will return the contents that were in the original vol.txt This example just shows how to store text in an ADS, but I'm pretty sure that you could store other things too, for example, files. I wonder why virus writers do not store files in ADS of system files in order to avoid detection. I wonder if encryption methods could be integrated with ADS. You know, even if you manage to decrypt the file, what you are looking for is in an ADS that you don't know about. Yeah, I know. Offtopic.

Re:adding gasoline to the fire

[Allador]

Why aren't things hidden more often in the alternate data streams? They are. It's a common rootkit hiding technique, or was for a time. But its very easy to detect, as it would alter the hash of the file, and would stick out like a sore thumb if a system file that never had an ADS all of a sudden did.

Re:adding gasoline to the fire

[secPM_MS]

I do not believe that ECC crypto is being added to XP SP3. If you want ECC crypto support, it is available in Vista.

XP SP3 is adding support for the SHA-2 hash family (SHA256, SHA384, and SHA512).

FIPS functionality is posted.

Microsoft's standard for symmetric encryption is AES 128 in CBC mode. 3 key 3 DES in CBC mode is an allowed alternative if AES is not availble.

Microsoft has some very competent cryptographers on its payroll and it does pay attention to progress in the field and the needs of security-critical customers.

Blackhole Avoidance?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Does anyone have any details on the blackhole routing avoidance feature? While the summary claims blackhole routers are "rogue" routers, blackhole routing is the most common way to stop DDoS attacks and excessive worm traffic from giant botnets of Windows machines. If the OS now offers botnet operators an easy way to bypass that rerouting of malware traffic, this could have serious detrimental affects upon the internet as a whole.

Re:Blackhole Avoidance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Vista also have this "protection"?

If not then this may be a method of scaring IT manager types into "upgrading" to Vista, "because XP is ruining teh intarwebz!!!!1"

Re:Blackhole Avoidance?

[the unbeliever]

black hole routers are not null routes.

black hole routers just drop packets that are "too big"; null routes are self explanatory, and are how most ISP's stop DOS attacks.

Re:Blackhole Avoidance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have any details on the blackhole routing avoidance feature? While the summary claims blackhole routers are "rogue" routers

Must be a MTU discovery method. The typical way to discover the MTU is to send packet of increasing size with the "don't fragment" bit set. When the packet size is too big, you get a transmission error, so you know what the MTU is.

The problem is that the error message is set by icmp, and many, many routers & firewalls block all sorts of icmp messages. You don't know if the recipient didn't receive your packet, or if the icmp error message was blocked.

Might be interesting, if microsoft is on to something new.

Re:Blackhole Avoidance?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

black hole routers are not null routes. black hole routers just drop packets that are "too big"; null routes are self explanatory, and are how most ISP's stop DOS attacks.

Blackhole routing, refers to any routing of packets, where you claim you can deliver the route, then drop the packet anyway, whether because of the size or any other characteristic. At least that is how it is used in the industry. Both my company and several of our competitors who sell devices designed to protect against DDoS attacks have a mitigation method referred to as "blackhole route."

Regardless of what you want to call it, if Windows is starting to try some sort of verification and automated avoidance of such routes it could interfere with said defenses, possible resulting in routing loops, DDoSing a router somewhere, or use of more advanced defensive techniques. That's good for me, since we can make more money, but bad for ISPs and enterprise businesses and pretty much everyone but botnet operators.

Re:Blackhole Avoidance?

[sycotic]

http://www.google.com/search?q=black+hole+router

You need to read the first result to understand why everyone is pointing out that you're not quite on the same page as Microsoft on this one

Re:Blackhole Avoidance?

[Slashcrap]

Regardless of what you want to call it, if Windows is starting to try some sort of verification and automated avoidance of such routes it could interfere with said defenses, possible resulting in routing loops, DDoSing a router somewhere, or use of more advanced defensive techniques.

You seem slightly confused about how the Internet works, so I'm guessing you work in sales. How exactly is your average Windows machine going to avoid these routes? Or influence the paths that its packets take once they've gone past the first router in any meaningful way whatsoever? Theoretically you can do some tricks with the various lesser known ICMP message types to change the routes that your packets take, but you don't seriously think that shit still works in real life do you? Just try doing some source routing from an average ADSL connected host and see how far you get. I guess if the Windows box was acting as a router for an ISP and running BGP then it could be an issue, but we're getting into the realms of surreal comedy here. Just remember that as a general rule your ISP decides how to route your packets, not you.

I'm pretty sure that the "black hole" stuff they're talking about is the old PMTU black hole issue. I'm equally sure that Windows 95 had a registry setting that turned on black hole detection, so I'd love to know what's actually new here.

Re:Blackhole Avoidance?

[cnettel]

A guess (but nothing else) is that it would also relate to the behavior when you have two interfaces providing theoretical routes to the target address, with different metrics, but one of them turns out to be unreliable. In that case, the strategy chosen by the local machine can clearly influence the result. (If your WLAN is actually more reliable than your cat5 that the cat toyed with yesterday...)

Re:Blackhole Avoidance?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

You seem slightly confused about how the Internet works, so I'm guessing you work in sales.

Nope.

How exactly is your average Windows machine going to avoid these routes?

That's a good question. Seeing as no one seems to have any details on how this is supposed to work, that's the reason I brought the topic up.

Theoretically you can do some tricks with the various lesser known ICMP message types to change the routes that your packets take, but you don't seriously think that shit still works in real life do you?

Theoretically there are a lot of routing tricks you can use and there are even more if you don't mind violating standards. What I'm more concerned with is if they're using some routing tricks that cause problems now, but on a wide scale by Windows, then in systems where, for example, you're passing some traffic with a GRE tunnel that re-onramps it to a downstream router and blackholing other traffic you could end up causing a lot of stress on the system.

The point is, if MS has enabled some wacky routing features by default it may well cause problems for people using blackhole routing as a tool to overcome the problems created by the glut of MS's easily compromised systems.

Re:Blackhole Avoidance?

[BuGless]

The problem is that the error message is set by icmp, and many, many routers & firewalls block all sorts of icmp messages. You don't know if the recipient didn't receive your packet, or if the icmp error message was blocked. Well, routers rarely block icmp, but a lot of misconfigured firewalls do, yes.

Re:Blackhole Avoidance?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing it refers to this set of changes they made in Server 2003 SP2 and Vista to PMTU Discovery. Basically, enabling it by default, and using minimum MSS as a fallback.

As per the other replies, this has absolutely nothing to do with DDoS scenarios, or routing paths at all for that matter. You're thinking of "null routing".

Re:Blackhole Avoidance?

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on which ICMP message types you mean. ICMP was designed for a network where nodes trusted one another, which is not the case today. Do you want to block Echo Reply, incoming TTL Exceeded, or Destination/Port Unreachable messages? No, you don't. What about Timestamp Request or router/netmask discovery messages? Or incoming Echo Request or outgoing TTL Exceeded? Or a whole bunch of other messages that could be used to probe your network?

Just because some people don't know how to configure their firewalls or perhaps some firewalls don't do what you tell them, don't assume that everything ICMP is good.

-M

Re:Blackhole Avoidance?

[bigbadwlf]

If the OS now offers botnet operators an easy way to bypass that rerouting of malware traffic, this could have serious detrimental affects upon the internet as a whole

Windows has been having a detrimental effect on the internet for years.

Re:Blackhole Avoidance?

[BuGless]

If the firewall allows you to either turn ICMP off completely or pass everything ICMP, then the better option IMO is to pass-along ICMP and then decide on the individual devices which requests you deem worthy a reply.

If the firewall allows you to discriminate amongst different types of ICMP, well, great, block the ones you consider a risk. But not all firewalls give you those options.

But shutting AIM up...

[Anonymous Coward]

would be sweet. I don't know why AOL has to have the default sounds so damn loud. You're watching TV on the PC, or listening to music, whatever, and you get an AIM message and *BRINGGG* loud as shit... I hate it... I hate AIM..

Re:But shutting AIM up...

[mpaulsen]

I believe AIM uses .wav files. You can turn them down yourself. Open the .wav files in sound recorder, select effects > decrease volume. Save when you're done.

Does the SP Install After The Hidden Update?

[NeverVotedBush]

Microsoft recently pushed out a stealth update to XP that reportedly breaks repairing the OS. Does anyone know if SP3 will install after Microsoft pushed out that last non-optional and hidden update?

And I'm with the other folks - service packs are supposed to fix things. Not that I don't mind new features, but where I run XP, I'd like to have it be a two step process.

It looks like Microsoft has finally owned up to the Vista fiasco. I can't help but think this would not be hitting the streets if Vista wasn't the dog it has turned out to be.

Microsoft Login Did Not Work

[Jane Q. Public]

Just for giggles, I followed the link in the base post, and got to the Microsoft Login page for downloading the SP. I tried to login, and my browser started going through various pages in a continuous loop. When I tried to break out of the loop it told me that "login does not work from here."

Pretty hilarious.

Now, I think I will wait until after someone documents how to install SP3 without having to install IE7 or that WGA garbage.

Re:Microsoft Login Did Not Work

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry when you install SP3 if you have IE7 on the machine it will uninstall it and replace it with IE6. Go figure?

Perhaps it's going to be soooo bad

[EmbeddedJanitor]

that Vista looks good and people will just switch.

Mirror.

[antdude]

NeoSmart server seems to be down. Here's a mirror.

No.

[Jon.Laslow]

Just like other replies, SP3 will still contain IE 6, although with a new tag of "SP3" as opposed to "SP2" as one would expect.

Re:is IE7 included? YES

[Anonymous Coward]

IE7 is a piece of crap and so WMP11. Since I will not allow either of them on my hard drive it doesn't look like I'll be upgrading to SP3 anytime soon.

Yes, yes

[Jon.Laslow]

Very funny, we never would have thought of it, etc....

Actually, it is pretty amusing, but the joke is spoiled by the fact that Microsoft recent merged all of the Windows beta programs (since there are three at the moment) in to a single site/program. Much easier to keep track of, especially because most if not all of the testers belong to the Vista SP1 and Server 2008 betas anyways.

New Product Activation!

[webview]

Where can I get the beta? Where can I get the beta?

Re:New Product Activation!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/1374026/

-AC

How much Vista badness will we get?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care a flying fsck about Aero and other Vista crap, I'm a Unix user who is forced by a bunch of applications to keep at home one Windows machine working. I don't play games, music or movies on this machine and of course never use it to surf the web or reading emails: there's zero personal data in its disk, therefore any spyware from Microsoft backported from Vista will be no harm to my data.
What I'm concerned about is the driver and software compatibility, stability and memory/resource consumption, and, more importantly, if these updates are forced to the user or can be refused/installed selectively.

Anybody tested this SP and can comment on the subject?

Yes, tried to get TFA, but it's /.'d.

Re:How much Vista badness will we get?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't play games, music or movie"

You sound like the life of the party.

Re:How much Vista badness will we get?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since your a "Unix" user then YOU of all people should know what dependency hell is and the problems that happen when program installations become the things of nightmares. To stay on track, If your gut instinct tells you that no good may come of this backporting of apps then OBEY IT! Since no one has put the information that your asking for out there in virtual world yet; just sit back and wait. Oh, and by the way, if your paranoid about automatic updates then turn them off before your Windows gets clobbered.

Also; furthermore, you don't do "anything(which is unbelievable)" with that Windows pc? Then why are you so concerned about it? You don't make any sense man/woman!

Re:How much Vista badness will we get?

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Did you intentionally quote an incomplete sentence in order to change its meaning for quick laughs or are you just stupid?

Re:How much Vista badness will we get?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since your a "Unix" user then YOU of all people should know what dependency hell is and the problems that happen when program installations become the things of nightmares. I would if things like symbolic links didn't exits. Seriously, I have had more dependency issues on a Windows machine than any other OS out there. Dependency management is trivial in Unix compared to Microsoft crap.

Re:How much Vista badness will we get?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever heard about embedded systems development? What if your development system uses a USB mcu programmer whose driver can't work under Wine and you're forced to keep a damn Windows machine for that task? Luckily they are rewriting everything under Linux, but in the meantime...

Even if it may sound absurd, many of us aren't forced to use Windows for games or playing mp3s. For that matter, my debian server can stream any media in all rooms here, bathrooms included, and the Freevo system I have in the living room predates the Microsoft innovative solution (MCE+WHS) by at least 3 years.

Re:is IE7 included? YES

[eMartin]

Do you use IE 6 now? If not what difference does it make?

I don't use IE as a browser, but I still upgraded to IE 7 on XP because some other apps use IE components, and I understand that 7 should be more secure.

SATA Drive Support on Install

[labnet]

One thing about XP installs that drives me nuts is no native SATA HDD support.
Lets hope they have put common SATA chip set support, or at least native USB drivers to be able to load them without the need to try and dig up a floppy disk or frig around with slipsteaming.

Re:SATA Drive Support on Install

[urbanriot]

One thing about XP installs that drives me nuts is no native SATA HDD support.
Lets hope they have put common SATA chip set support, or at least native USB drivers to be able to load them without the need to try and dig up a floppy disk or frig around with slipsteaming.
You do realize that SATA support is controller specific right?

Re:SATA Drive Support on Install

[dbIII]

They would obviously want a driver for that chipset since that is really what an OS is about anyway. Some motherboards can pretend to be generic IDE anyway. I have seen win98 installed on a system with only SATA drives (the systems have very expensive A/D converter cards not supported by Win2k/XP).

Re:SATA Drive Support on Install

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats a dumb thing to complain about.

Xp sp2 supports tons of sata controllers and its piss simple to slipstream in sata drivers with programs such as nlite.

Vista will suffer from the same sata driver problems as it gets older.

Re:SATA Drive Support on Install

[Anonymous Coward]

When Win98 boots up, if it doesn't see its boot device, it reverts to using BIOS int 13h for disk access, which will allow access to the boot device in all cases.

Re:SATA Drive Support on Install

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista will suffer from the same sata driver problems as it gets older.

Vista supports AHCI, plus it can load drivers off USB mass storage devices during install, so no, it won't suffer the same fate.

Re:SATA Drive Support on Install

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! My wife works at a corporate help desk, and her specialty is Windows installs. All the questions about new installs are routed to her. While there are a huge different number of problems with the Windows installer, the one she says comes-up most often is Microsoft's unwillingness to support newer common IDE/SATA devices. Even the most common ones from Intel that have been out for years are not supported by Microsoft. They intentionally made the decision to screw-over all of the owners of modern hardware that want to install XP. The creates a huge problem for her company, because quite a few people attempt to install Vista after XP doesn't work by design, and that creates an even bigger problem she has to clean-up. Microsoft doesn't care because they get to sell a copy of Vista to people that have already paid for XP.

Re:is IE7 included? YES

[Anonymous Coward]

No I'm mostly into Firefox these days but occasionally am still forced to use IE6. It's just the principle of it. I don't want any software on my system regardless of how little or often it's used if it's annoying (as IE7 is) or buggy.

Now IE8 I hear may be back up to the standards of IE6 in terms of customizability and so I'll just wait and see if that turns out to be the case then go ahead and install SP3.

What features?

[Joce640k]

"You're missing the real significance to this. They are back porting features from Vista!!! "

What features would those be, better DRM and anti-piracy features?

Hardly compelling...

Requested Feature

[Nom du Keyboard]

(Most) Requested Feature: DX-10.

What "massive rewrite"?

[Joce640k]

DirectX is just a COM interface to the video driver.

The main differences between DX9 and DX10 are new shaders and getting rid of all the legacy capability bits, neither of which has any dependency on the operating system or driver model.

I bet that if Microsoft gave the go-ahead to ATI/NVIDIA/INTEL there'd be DX10 support for XP in the very next release. The only reason they aren't doing it is because Microsoft is artificially blocking them.

They did the exact same thing with OpenGL when Vista was in Beta. Microsoft went around making a lot of noise saying "It can't be done!!" but the driver writers were saying it was easy. Eventually they gave in and Bingo! We have OpenGL on Vista.

Re:What "massive rewrite"?

[Anonymous Coward]

implemented on top of DX10, no?

Re:What "massive rewrite"?

[n dot l]

DirectX is just a COM interface to the video driver. I wish (really, I do - I trust NV's engineers way more than MS's). Fact is the DX runtime does a fair bit of work before the driver gets to do its bit - DX calls aren't all implemented as jmp equivalent_driver_entry_point. True, the stuff the runtime does is mostly trivial but that hasn't stoped MS from tangling the implementation into the horrible mess they've made with Vista. This is all because, right from the start, DX10's runtime assumes the new driver model is available - so it is all, essentially, designed and built on top of a platform that includes (optional) virtualization of GPU resources (for god's sake, they should have just let the IHVs do this like before), automatic graphics system restarts if the hardware ever times out (yawn), some special hookups for Aero (yawn some more), and DRM (hate).

I bet that if Microsoft gave the go-ahead to ATI/NVIDIA/INTEL there'd be DX10 support for XP in the very next release. The only reason they aren't doing it is because Microsoft is artificially blocking them. Believe me, I share your confidence in NVIDIA and ATI's engineers. I'm sure they could back-port their DX10 stuff to XP...but MS would still have to lead the way by backporting, testing, and then maintaining and supporting their part of the DX10 implementation - which they simply won't do, for obvious reasons.

They did the exact same thing with OpenGL when Vista was in Beta. Microsoft went around making a lot of noise saying "It can't be done!!" but the driver writers were saying it was easy. Eventually they gave in and Bingo! We have OpenGL on Vista. That really isn't what I've heard from the IHVs. MS stalled on GL support because they actually had to do something on their side to properly support it (keep in mind that Opengl32.dll, which houses all the entry points up to GL 1.something, is written and maintained by MS and that the IHVs have to plug their drivers into that, and then expose everything else as extensions on top of it). I spent some time talking to one of ATI's devs at GDC06 about the framebuffer_object extension and, since this was still news at the time, the conversation drifted to OpenGL support in Vista. According to him it went more along these lines:

1. Microsoft hands out the driver development kit and says, "This should be everything you need to implement OpenGL support."
2. IHV's look at it and say "um, no, you forgot to add this bit"
3. Microsoft says, "Huh, you're right. Tell you what, we don't have time for this (Vista's already behind, you know!) so is it OK if we support GL but just disable Aero while it's running?"
4. Someone leaks the answer and the GL community is instantly outraged that their stuff won't work with the shiny new Aero experience (that half of them had been hating on for months already).
5. Someone, again, makes the claim that MS is out to kill OpenGL (yeah, like they'd actually break Windows support for some of the all-time most popular games).
6. Microsoft finally changes its schedule and puts in the feature.
7. GL community declares victory, and then continues to gripe about how long it's taking to get Vista out.

I agree 100% that the biggest roadblock to DX10 on XP is artificial, but it's not just the evil marketing guys trying to sell Vista. There's also the evil "discontinue XP" guys that don't want to dedicate resources to the old platform. As a game developer, I hate them for it, but it is good business sense - or would have been if Vista were actually the miracle it was supposed to be and people were actually adopting it at a decent rate.

Oh well. So much for squeezing out that extra 2 FPS (wheee!) by writing a DX backend. Continuing to be an OpenGL shop...at least until we do an XBOX title.

Re:What "massive rewrite"?

[suv4x4]

What "massive rewrite" [..] The main differences between DX9 and DX10 are new shaders and getting rid of all the legacy capability bits, neither of which has any dependency on the operating system or driver model.

Oh you missed the part about the rewritten API and Object Model?
Or about the new kernel mode / userspace mode separation of the GUI (DX10 does, in fact, depend on new kernel features)?
Did you also miss the fact DX10 GPU's can natively multithread?
Or that they can use virtual memory?

Now, whether you can get it on XP or not: port enough of the Vista bits back and you can get everything in XP, you can in fact just slap XP label on Vista and call it a day.

Whether Microsoft should do that is another issue. It's perfectly legitimate of them to put major efforts on their new OS. I'll be happy if they, however, are quicker next time with the stability/security fixes on their legacy OS. I've been waiting for XP SP3 forever.

Re:What "massive rewrite"?

[Opportunist]

To get even the most dedicated hardcore gamer to get Vista and reinstall everything (yeah, yeah, upgrades are possible... but didn't work, ever, with Windows) just to get DX10, the difference would have to be akin to Vodoo2 vs. GTX8800. You'd rather get a gamer to blow 500 bucks on a new graphics card than to trash his finely tuned system.

Now, as a game developer, do you develop for DX10? Because one thing is a given, you have to also develop for DX9, or your game won't sell (and if it does, you'll be plagued by returns because it won't run on XP). How many studios can take the risk of doing a DX10-only game today, with a market that's about the size of the Mac market?

Re:What "massive rewrite"?

[n dot l]

To get even the most dedicated hardcore gamer to get Vista and reinstall everything (yeah, yeah, upgrades are possible... but didn't work, ever, with Windows) just to get DX10, the difference would have to be akin to Vodoo2 vs. GTX8800. You'd rather get a gamer to blow 500 bucks on a new graphics card than to trash his finely tuned system. You'd be surprised at what some of the hardcores will do. I mean, honestly, nobody actually needs quad-SLI and yet...but you're right, that's not much of a market.

Now, as a game developer, do you develop for DX10? Because one thing is a given, you have to also develop for DX9, or your game won't sell (and if it does, you'll be plagued by returns because it won't run on XP). How many studios can take the risk of doing a DX10-only game today, with a market that's about the size of the Mac market? DX10 only? Nobody that isn't owned by Microsoft or being paid a lot of money to do their bidding will be doing that for at least a year or two, that's for sure. But the big studios can afford to do both at once (their engines are already set up to be ported to far more exotic platforms so it's not such a burden for them), so DX10 will slowly become mainstream. Once Microsoft discontinues XP people will have to get Vista and six months to a year after that things will have changed.

Either that or OpenGL 3.0 will do away with the ridiculously convoluted spec/extension system we have now, and more developers will use it, and MS will be forced to adapt DX or let it die... And I really hope they'd choose to adapt, a lot of great innovation's come about because of competition between the two (GL's extension mechanism allows IHVs to slip in little features that aren't guaranteed to be useful, DX forces features which are proven to be useful to become mainstream, the cycle repeats).

As for me, personally, being a game developer - I don't intend to touch DX10 for a long time, and then only if GL's performance somehow becomes too horrible to bear on Windows. It doesn't offer anything that GL + NVIDIA's / the ARB's extensions can't already do except a cleaner interface and slightly less driver overhead.

And please don't bring up the Mac market...gawds...*resists urge to rant about Apple*

Re:What "massive rewrite"?

[gad_zuki!]

>I've been waiting for XP SP3 forever.

If youve been doing your windows updates then you have 99% of it. Im not seeing any big stability fix here, just lots of hotfixes rolled into one and some vista stuff tossed in.

Re:What "massive rewrite"?

[suv4x4]

>I've been waiting for XP SP3 forever.

If youve been doing your windows updates then you have 99% of it. Im not seeing any big stability fix here, just lots of hotfixes rolled into one and some vista stuff tossed in.

You don't understand: I've had this XP install for over 4 years, and it's showing its age, after installing and removing all sorts of apps over time (not those little spyware free apps, but trials, and various things I thought I need but didn't afterwise).

I want to reinstall, and those are 1000+ hotfixes I need to catch up to. In fact this is the reason I kept my current install. I wanted to reinstall for at least 5-6 months now.

If Autopatcher was around I wouldn't fuss much about it. Thanks to Microsoft it's not.

Re:What "massive rewrite"?

[gad_zuki!]

>want to reinstall, and those are 1000+ hotfixes

Download the image for an SP2 disc and install. Its 90 something patches last I tried and about 60-80 megabytes at most (ignoring IE which is a 17 meg installer). Its three reboots last time I did it. once for windows installer/windows update and then again for the rpc fix and then a whole bunch.

You can also get the admin installer for SP2 and run it immediatly after your SP1 (or sp0) install. Then the above process.

They also said OpenGL was impossible...

[Joce640k]

They said OpenGL was impossible but it turned out to be a lie (as we all knew)

The main problem is that DX10 on XP would be a lot faster than on Vista... ...and we can't have that, can we?

You don't know Jack?

[flyingfsck]

For the Jack impaired: http://lau.linuxaudio.org/jack/

MOD PARENT UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT UP!!!

Slow-down code. Makes XP feel as sluggish as Vista

Vista's look

[Isomer]

Vista's theme reminds me of the eye candy from Enlightenment circa 2000ish. Sure it's a bit better delivered (eg transparency is actual transparency in vista, not faked), but the "black matte" look was all the rage 10 years ago and the excessive overuse of shadows, 3dish effects and transpancy and tinting are all there...

Witch! Burn her!

[Oriumpor]

Don't throw something out because you don't understand it. nLite can be a very powerful tool in business to do the things you need to get done with a very nice pricetag. I've seen nlite do wonders for thousands of systems to streamline automated deployments.

What nLite did to windows in that instance the user TOLD nLite to do to windows.

Re:Witch! Burn her!

[Anonymous Coward]

What nLite did to windows in that instance the user TOLD nLite to do to windows. Ok, I will ask the obvious. Where in nLite do you tell it to set windows for administrator usb function only?

Can it fix my hyper-threading???

[DumbSwede]

I avoided SP2 for over 2 years because it broke my hyper-threading on my 4+ year old 3ghz P4 Dell XPS. I eventually gave in, in order to install some software my wife needed. Seems like a 50/50 chance I can re-enable hyper-threading with it.

Re:Can it fix my hyper-threading???

[sqrt(2)]

Intersting, while fixing something else recently I noticed that hyperthreading was turned off in my bios. The system is also a P4 3ghz from Dell, but not an XPS. I had never changed it or even went into the bios before so it was like that when it came shipped from Dell. I enabled it, couldn't really tell if there was a performance increase, everything seemed about the same. The machine is running Vista (Ultimate), and handles it quite nicely (with an x800 and 2gb of RAM). I'm wondering if hyperthreading would have been able to work under XP. Do you know the exact cause of the problem, is it something specific to the P4?

Halo 2?

[charlieo88]

But will XP SP3 be able to play Halo 2, a game that a pentium III Xbox can run, but apparently too complicated for anything less than Vista?

Timing is a funny thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Today, my girl's laptop was due for it's tri-monthly reinstall of XP. Every 3 months or so it has to be done or the machine becomes unbearably slow. It's only an 800mhz machine and it just gets bogged down.

After talking to her about what applications she uses, I decided to load it up with Ubuntu instead. She is loving it, and after I got her wifi working properly has had no issues.

Now I'm not one of these linux zealots, I say use the right tool for the job, whatever that tool may be.
If there are no specific applications that tie you (or perhaps a friend?) to windows, maybe it's time you looked at some alternatives instead of staying on the reinstall/service pack treadmill.

-Slackware user since 1995

Disregarding the "Vista Angle"

[LoadWB]

I'm just happy that new installations of Windows XP will now be MUCH MUCH faster. A clean installation of Windows XP with SP2 can take several hours due to over 280MB of additional update downloads, even with off-line update CDs and so on. And that's on a fairly recent computer with decent specs!

I might have to kill a Dell hard drive so I can get a Dell XP SP3 OEM CD with the replacement (I could probably slipstream, but I want to see what color the SP3 CD will be.)

Re:Disregarding the "Vista Angle"

[BrentH]

Ever heard of slipstreaming/nLite? Makes your life better...

So, Vista is testing, and ...

[RandySC]

XP is old reliable stable? Then they backport from testing to stable?

comparisons comparisons

[pizzach]

Implementation makes all of the difference. If it was done well, it sounds like a nice feature. Otherwise, it sounds like a Linux window manager that gives you a freakish amount of control over your windows at the detriment of usability for normal people.

Re:comparisons comparisons

[Ox0065]

Sounds like a great feature for people who listen to music while they work with CAD & e-mail programs that make annoying beep sounds at regular intervals...

**sigh** (OK I'll bite, reel me in & mod me off topic)...ie. not useful for my nanna, but she doesn't use programs with Mac OS 7 defaults, and all the options that were cutting edge in '97 turned off, removed from dialogs & hidden in a configuration database... either... like...

BTW, FWIW:

• tree view in a side bar next to folders doesn't scare or confuse my Nanna, nor does the option in a menu, hotkey or dialog. She's used firefox.
• Needing a database editor to turn a sidebar (that used to sorta work) on and off does.
• I used & loved Gnome until about six months after those interface guidelines made everything painful to use
• nobbling galeon, nautilus instead & the move to sawfish & then metacity (effectively locked in) killed it completely
• now its a drag to even turn on dragging windows between desktops...
• but nothing that couldn't be fixed by replacing nautilus, metacity & gconfd...
• OH WAIT!, XFCE/emerald... done.

tag

User Account Control?

[phalse phace]

Please include Vista's User Account Control.

*crosses fingers*

/sarcasm

Oblig

[Bearhouse]

"he only way to apply the last service pack for IE 5.01"

Apart from installing the ultimate SP - Linux!

autopatcher

[baboonlogic]

Hmmm... this puts their autopatcher move into perspective. Autopatcher could potentially have competed with an official service pack.

Windows 2000 troll, sorry, user

[rubenerd]

I moved over to FreeBSD + KDE and Mac OS X quite a while ago now but I still have Windows 2000 on one desktop and in a VM on my MacBook Pro for apps that won't play with WINE. I find it funny that people are saying that there's nothing Windows Vista does better or new compared to XP that would make them upgrade, I still think that about 2000 versus XP.

I haven't really played around with Vista that much but what little experience I've had with it made me crige just because it's so friggen verbose (and that's even ignoring Cancel/Allow). In KDE and OS X when you click on the battery icon it tells you how much charge you have in percent and hours. On Vista it shows an icon, the battery's serial number, why would I need or want that?

For the sake of my friends' (who run XP) sanity, I hope they don't back port such "features". It would be useful if they back ported the black tacky glossy start menu and taskbar though. That really has the potential to vastly improve productivity.

Re:Windows 2000 troll, sorry, user

[Anonymous Coward]

I moved over to FreeBSD + KDE and Mac OS X quite a while ago now but I still have Windows 2000 on one desktop and in a VM on my MacBook Pro for apps that won't play with WINE. I find it funny that people are saying that there's nothing Windows Vista does better or new compared to XP that would make them upgrade, I still think that about 2000 versus XP.

I just wanted to comment on this part. Until mid this year, I swore by my old copy of Win2k Pro. I do a lot of gaming on a semi-older machine, so keeping a lot of bloat off of my system is important to me; add in the fact that I just don't have the time to learn a new OS (I just don't want to spend my Christmas vacation slumped over my computer learning it) and you can see why I thought that staying with the older, less 'pretty' and more down-to-Earth Windows 2000 seemed like the best option.

One day, I tried to Supreme Commander and found that it wouldn't work on my system. Why? The developer didn't support Windows 2000. Period. I had been waiting so long for that game I broke down, got a copy of Windows XP Pro, and grudgingly installed it.

I've never thought about going back, since.

Without any bias, I can say that installing Windows XP for my computer was the best thing I had done for it in half a year. My games improved their performance--from fixing little bugs to just running smoother. My system crashes less (no, no... really) and is more stable all-around. I have so many fewer problems now because I moved to current standard. And the bloat I was worried about? 10 minutes of disabling and uninstalling "features" removed the garbage. So many Windows users moved on to XP that 2k Pro seems to be the older, backward relative that can do a lot of the same things, but breaks a hip when trying to play Unreal with the younger operating systems at the LAN party.

So, I'm not suggesting you drop the FreeBSD + KDE and Mac, but I do strongly suggest you move your Win2k Pro system over to XP Pro, just for the sake of making the box more effective. Believe me... it was like getting a new computer. At this rate, I'll likely be using XP until they do something Very Bad to force me off and really learn Linux.

%$^^&, i hope not

[someone1234]

I need only DX10, but that is definitely not in the package. So M$, screw your SP.

Time to turn off automatic updates

[williambbertram]

I don't think we should discount the possibility that Microsoft will try to pull some shit with this service pack to improve Vista sales.

Sounds more like Vista with XP GUI

[bl8n8r]

1,073 patches for chrissakes?

      "Contrary to popular belief, Windows XP SP3 does ship with all-new features
        not just patches and hotfixes, most of them backported from Windows Vista"

Sounds to me like Vista is being backported to XP.

nLite causing problems

[FoamingToad]

Agreed - I experimented with nLite integrating the critical updates only (up to about a year ago, which is the time I messed around with it). The machine built OK, but then System File Checker complained about massive numbers of files. I ended up having to bare-metal the machine again and restart.

For any type of business use Windows Server Update Services is worth investigating. I've moved over to that following testing another couple of methods of mass-deploying Windows updates without great success. While WSUS doesn't seem a panacaea (in particular I still seem to be downloading a number of updates from the 'web, despite them being configured at the WSUS end), it at least reduces the amount of time spent pulling the couple of hundred meg post-SP2 of updates needed to get XP into a current state.

I'm cautiously optimistic about SP3 though. Just let me slipstream it onto an XP CD and I'll be happy again.

F_T

Does it kill existing installs?

[Monkeys with Guns]

With SP2, to this day some machines that had existing installs would fail to work after updating. I recently had a machine that had to be completly reinstalled after installing SP2. I have a client running SP1 still because I'm too afraid to install SP2. Can we expect this with SP3?

Simple Question for everyone, Yes or No to this

[Anonymous Coward]

So do I want or need this upgrade? Am I at risk with staying with SP2? Is SP3 just more DRM?

Yes or No?

Re:Simple Question for everyone, Yes or No to this

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone?

MS boycotss XP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could MS be planning to add unstability and bugs to XP to force migration to vista?

Re:MS boycotss XP?

[Monkeys with Guns]

Didn't they add instability and bugs years ago?

Smart, Very Smart

[Anonymous Coward]

If they backport everything people like from VISTA to XP, then XP becomes another migration path, a user driven rather than top-down driven migration path, to the VISTA technology platform, whatever its called; very smart.

-Sal

Torrent?

[Wikipedia]

You should see a torrent of this build here in the next few days:

http://btjunkie.org/search?q=3205

these look like old builds:

http://btjunkie.org/search?q=sp3

Network Access Protection

[skinfitz]

Network Access Protection modules and policies have been brought to XP after being one of the more-well-received features in Windows Vista If that means we will get GPO control over 802.1x configuration for WIRED networks (not wireless - XP has that already) then that and that alone is worth the upgrade IMO.

It was actually the only Vista feature that caught my eye. It's the difference between being able to sensibly roll out 802.1x EAP/PEAP on your switches and not.

Re:is IE7 included? No - it isn't

[mike_diack]

Check your facts - I installed this on Saturday. The service pack doesn't upgrade IE to IE7, nor does it upgrade the version of media player.

That is so in beta 1 - whether it may change in the final release I don't know

Mike

Mod Parent Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate troll...

Re:is IE7 included? YES

[baadger]

I don't use IE as a browser, but I still upgraded to IE 7 on XP because some other apps use IE components, and I understand that 7 should be more secure.

I'm not too sure on this but IE6 and it's engine are still available post-IE7 install, so it's likely applications *explicitly* coded to use IE6 engine components probably continue to do so unless updated. So maybe there is no security advantage if you don't use it as a browser?

Oh GREAT....

[ThePengwin]

I Just updated to XP SP2 a few weeks ago!

product key !!!!

[rk075245]

Why need enter the product Key, it is not really required for these patch set and all . in that case how MS will track the key from central server for security purpose and all ???

Re:is IE7 included? YES

[eMartin]

That may be true in some cases (or maybe none), but looking at the loaded DLLs in a few programs (Steam, Help Viewer, etc.), the version numbers are all 7.00...