Vista SP1 Is Even Less Compatible

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Microsoft is now saying that Vista SP1 disables some 3rd party applications. The KB article on SP1 incompatibility states: 'For reliability reasons, Microsoft blocks these programs from starting after you install Windows Vista SP1.' It does link to several vendor support pages with updates or workarounds. Unfortunately, at least one of the suggestions consists of merely disabling part of the program, which could leave you with half an anti-virus solution."

Comments

Vista again?

[Eddy Luten]

Why are we still even talking about Vista? Is anybody really using Vista these days? Governments and Organizations have spoken out against Vista, Office 2007 and it lives in infamy everywhere else. Even Microsoft's Eric Traut has somewhat spoken out against Vista and Windows in general.

Everywhere I go people say I'll stick to XP for as long as I can, even in the Enterprise. These type of /. submissions are getting really old really fast since they all repeat the same message: stay the hell away from Vista.

Re:Vista again?

[Pr0xY]

First of all, let me say I agree with you. Backwards compatibility while a noble goal, it is difficult to accomplish while making real worth while changes to a large system. However, I have a proposed solution... why not have an *optionally installed software compatibility layer, which would work similarly to wine? It could hypothetically have the same compatibility as Windows XP (so long as it's all user space, drivers are a whole other ball of wax). And not necessarily be needed. You could even have a special directory for legacy stuff and use something like syminks to keep things accessible to the user. Something like, "C:\CompatXP\" which all legacy apps would be "chrooted" to would work nicely, your regular file system could be present as a separate driver letter or something. Finally, if anyone is in a position to do this correctly, it's the people who wrote the APIs to begin with!

Heck, they could do this for each generation of windows too. Like "C:\Compat2K\", etc. In fact, I could see this as a very nice upgrade path as well. There are tons of opportunities here to keep the legacy optional and very functional. I just don't see why no-one at MS seems to have thought of this.

proxy

Re:AntiTrust concerns?

[gnutoo]

AV vendors have been claiming antitrust for eight months. SP1 causes great inconvenience to their customers, what a suspicious coincidence. If the vendors were really cooperating SP1 would have contained their improvements, not a little note or a lock out.

ReactOS

[Akaihiryuu]

The project I'm really keeping an eye on right now is ReactOS. http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html It's still alpha right now, but they're expecting to hit beta later this year. The initial beta release is supposed to be around 70% Windows compatible (realistically most things will work even then because the last 30% is stuff that isn't used that much). They're aiming for 100% compatibility of course...probably shortly before 1.0. Once that hits there will be a Windows alternative with absolutely 0 Microsoft code. It has the potential to make them irrelevant.

Re:AntiTrust concerns?

[turnipsatemybaby]

And how is it Microsoft's responsibility if application vendors are incapable of following the spec? If you can't follow the API properly, and the incorrect functionality you are relying on is changed/fixed, it's your responsibility to fix your own software.

I read an interesting article way back when about how Microsoft has had to bend over backwards, replicating old bugs and inconsistencies so that existing software won't break when users upgrade. At this point, I think it's safe to say that all those efforts, combined with the other political stupidity microsoft has done (like integrating IE into the OS) is now starting to bite Microsoft in the rear. Vista is just the critical mass of all bugs piled on top of bugs on top of API changes, etc.

I think Apple had the right idea when they made OS X. Redo the whole OS, and then include the old OS in a compatibility VM. That way you get a clean start while still supporting older apps.

Re:Bit of a catch-22, isn't there?

[I'm Don Giovanni]

"Average time between the installation of an XP system and the moment of system compromise is ~ 45 seconds. I forget the source, but it's been backed up by numerous other tests. Service Pack 2 supposedly increases the security, but not by much. I doubt Vista fares much better."

You'd be wrong.
A couple of years ago, a study were performed using XP, XP SP1, XP SP2, OSX (Panther, I think), and some version of Red Hat.
In the study, the computers were connected to the net and timed to see how long each would be compromised. XP and XP SP1 were compromised within seconds (like 12 or so, IIRC), but XP SP2, OSX, and Red Hat systems ran for two weeks without being compromised, at which point the test was ended. The study showed that XP SP2 was attacked orders of magnitude more than OSX and Red Hat, but the attacks failed.