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Last-Minute Glitch Holds Up Windows XP SP3
An anonymous reader sends word that Microsoft Windows XP SP3, which had been scheduled to hit the Web today, was pulled back at the last minute. SP3 apparently broke a Microsoft application, Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System. Their solution is to set up a filter to make sure that no system running the affected software will get automatically updated; once the filter is in place, SP3 will be released to the Web. A fix for the incompatibility will follow.
You'd think Microsoft would test Service Packs against all Microsoft products while the SPs are still in Alpha or Beta.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It's a shame they don't have full access to all Microsoft products to test this long before the release date.
So why do I keep getting the feeling like they will provide some "incentives" to migrate to Vista with this new SP3 release... I mean why release a service pack 2 months before you end support on a product?? Kind of something to think about before installing this potential trojan... :)
Seriously, if Microsoft is prepared to hold up an update of this sort and then modify the procedure to kludge their way around the problem for their own software but would just release the patch if it was someone else's application, then this seems extremely dubious to my non-expert mind. After all, doesn't this give their applications the unusual, and unfair, advantage that they might work with Windows both before and after a major update?
As much as I hate to admit it, I actually believed those lying B*stards.
Honestly who here (besides myself) did not see this coming?
Beny"I'm a humble person really,
I'm actually much greater than I think I am"
Vista SP1 has the same bug
According to a leaked recording from Microsoft's secret underground Quality Assurance Lair, the real reason was a bit more complicated. Here's a transcription from the files that I received:
"Hey, guys! Why is this chair stuck inside SP3? How does this kind of stuff get in here anyway? We can't ship it like this!"
This kind of thing happens more ofteh than you might think.
I work for an online retailer and one of my recent tasks was to evaluate Dynamics for potential use in house. The problem that we ran into was that the media that Microsoft sent us directly plain didn't work. We couldn't even get the package to install; hell we even read the manual. We tried it on XP, Server 2003, and 2008 beta. The installer walks you through all of the preinstall requirements and manages to explode every time. So are they sure SP3 dumping Dynamics isn't just a "feature"?
We are looking at the Apache Open For Biz suite now instead and if that doesn't satisfy management they will go with SugarCRM.
they caught an error and patched it for everyone else while working on it.
This can happen to any patch that rolls out. It's when it's not caught that we should complain.
No, I am NOT an apologist.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
ZDnet had posted a link to it this morning, so I downloaded it here on the fast conection I get at work. I was planning to slipstream a SP3 install disk to have it ready for the next time I need to install, but now I'm wondering if I should just wait. But it seems like they're not going to change SP3 itself but just release a hotfix later -- is that so?
I don't use, and never will, the app they're concerned about.
i am a soviet space shuttle
I can understand holding back from Windows/Microsoft updates, but why hold back from the download site? Unless you want to make people question the viability of XP and reconsider holding off on Vista.
Maybe if they programmed things properly in the first place, and didn't spend ages designing hidden APIs and other stuff that only they themselves could take advantage of, they wouldn't be in this colossal mess. And I think it speaks volumes that such a company is unable to handle its own products.
--
Insert plug for Free Software plug here --
Makes you wonder what software will break that they didn't test...
I suppose we owe thanks to the early adopters out there for testing all our updates.
Now you know why your corporate IT department is so reluctant to update software and OSs.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
People actually use that POS?
In a nutshell:
* one of Microsoft's own software breaks after installing SP3 for Windows XP.
* the software that breaks is a business application, and not some security program requiring undocumented API calls or system drivers
What are the odds that software from others will break, too?
A cynical part of me wonders if SP3 contains breaking changes to make life harder for WINE, and possibly other solutions.
Does anyone have more info regarding the specific reasons for breakage?
getting all those glitches in on time for release.
Secondly, Microsoft is not one monolithic entity, as many believe, but a group of different business units. The DRMS folk aren't going to drop their current activities to check whether a different business unit's updates work.
Thirdly, so what! Why not ship it anyway with a release note saying "Don't use with DRMS!". SP2 broke some MS developer tools and that did not stop them shipping it. Some organisations had to wait months for updates before they could migrate to SP2.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Sweet! I gotta get me some SP3 Lovin'!
SP3...apparently broke a Microsoft application, Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System...
Service Pack withdrawn because it breaks the Microsoft DRM System. Cue tinfoil hats.
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
I'm amazed the submitter didn't go for the glitzy headline: "Microsoft breaks RMS"
Is there any way to get the Service Pack 3 in its final form if we don't use MS DRMS?
They should have just filled out a Karnaugh map and done the overlapping square trick. That gets rid of some glitches.
http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/software/svpk/2008/04/windowsxp-kb936929-sp3-x86-enu_c81472f7eeea2eca421e116cd4c03e2300ebfde4.exe (download.windowsupdate.com redirects to Microsoft.com, it's legit)
Good job, Microsoft.
If my memory serves me correctly, SP2 was also delayed several weeks to due the discovery of the integer overflow class of vulnerabilities.
Why? Because this is Microsoft.
Yeah, okay, retract your "ZEALOT!" claws for a second here and let's just look at their track record over the last four years:
- XP SP2 - for over a year after its release Microsoft had a free support line set up SPECIFICALLY to roll people back to SP1 because the upgrade broke just about everything. Most official support from Microsoft Products (Office, MSN, etc.) involved the following: Are you on SP2? If yes, go to SP2 support to roll back. If no, continue with troubleshooting.
- Vista - Backwards compatibility for applications and drivers broken, UAC interfering in various tasks and regardless of constantly selecting "Allow" you'd still get permission problems, slow performance, original system specs apparently not good enough to run all features.
- Vista SP1 - broke the OS, more compatibility problems, slight performance upgrade but still will not run on lightly powered computers
Conclusions? Best one I can come up with is that Microsoft has no concept how to properly test their products. I'd honestly believe that their concept of alpha testing is "Does it compile?" and I think a lot of their testers are outsourced (this is a guess) offshore because it's cheaper, and this usually results in degraded quality as well as introducing barriers between the developers and those reporting the errors.
It works like this: If you have in-house testers, you may have one person in between testers and developers at most. It's a lot easier for a tester to speak directly to the developer and answer any questions that the developer might have. When dealing with outsourcing, usually the testers need to report the issues to somebody in-house (supervisor? senior?), who a lot of the time will then need to pass it on to their liason to the client. The liason will then speak to a liason from Microsoft who will then address it to the supervising programmer (or worse yet, the programming supervisor who then passes it to the supervising programmer), and finally it makes its way to the developers.
Then a developer looks at the broken English in the error report as well as all the spin and syllables added by the various managers, and has to go through the chain again to find out wtf the original tester is talking about.
Remember the game "Telephone?" Where everybody sits in a giant line, person on one end whispers something to the person next to them, who does likewise to the person on the other side, and so on and so forth until it gets to the end and the message sounds nothing like what it was originally. It's a lot like that.
This is a real problem in the tech world these days. Globalisation is making it so that left hands never know what right hands are doing because there's way too many layers of flappers between the people with the information and the people who need it. Information gets delayed, lost and misdirected much like airline luggage.
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We need a quellesurprise tag...
My 0.02 cents
I never knew that RMS was able to stop a service pack! :) I've been waiting all day to make that one. Epic fail.
Shh.
After many, many years of reading the tripe that passes for news here, I'm shocked, SHOCKED to find a news story that is actually useful. I'm shopping for POS systems right now, and this is gonna make me think twice about MS DRMS. The last thing you want in a POS is instability. Lines of happy customers can quickly become angry if the cash registers suddenly die.
I don't respond to AC's.
This is hilarious, they are writing a patch for a patch that has not been released yet!!!!
I haven't seen a link posted yet, so: http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/software/svpk/2008/04/windowsxp-kb936929-sp3-x86-enu_c81472f7eeea2eca421e116cd4c03e2300ebfde4.exe
1&1 - Cheap domain and web hosting.
So does this mean when its released it will be glitch free!? YAY!!
Microsoft racing to restore compatibility with DRMS.
I can't help but think that Microsoft has an Ace up their sleeve for getting people to ditch XP for vista- Make SP3 really horrid and impossible to reverse the installation. Of course, one could uninstall and reinstall their XP and not update to SP3, but the damage will be done. People would most likely say "Screw it" and go to vista, or go to Linux systems like Ubuntu. How tempting would it be for Microsoft to just make the final large service pack a perfect reason to "upgrade" to Vista?
OK, so it doesn't install the update on systems with Dynamics installed.
What about those users who choose to install XP, complete all the updates, and then install the rest of their software? Does SP3 revert to SP2? Does it prevent the installation of Dynamics? Or does it just break Dynamics?
I think that it is still going to cause problems. My local computer mag site already has it as a download and will prolly be on their next cover disk: http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Download/109499,microsoft-windows-xp-service-pack-3.aspx
But as someone else pointed out, not many who run Dynamics will ever bother to do a manual update.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
After one false start a few days ago, caused when someone posted build 3311 (a release candidate) as the final RTM, I downloaded the final release this morning. I immediately slipstreamed it into a (XP Pro SP2) CD folder, threw an answer file winnt.sif into the i386 directory, and burned a bootable CD.
Then, I swapped a blank hard disk into this very HP DV9000 laptop, and did the clean unattended SP3 build.
The build went OK, I installed all my apps with few surprises, and now I'm back up on my old user profile (since I'm on a domain, it even remembers my stored passwords).
A few observations:
--They didn't add too many drivers: SP3.CAB (which presumably includes all the contents of SP2.CAB) is only 19587 KB in size, a mere 7 percent larger than the SP2 driver file released in August 2004.
--I don't think any of those added drivers helped my DV9000: I ended up installing every single device I had to update a few months ago when I last did a clean SP2 install.
--They did, at least, include the High-Definition Audio update in SP3. This is helpful, since Microsoft no longer offers the update for download; building a clean SP2 box with HD Audio previously required one to find a copy somewhere else before the sound -- and often the modem -- drivers would work.
--It doesn't include IE7, and my customized Google installer wouldn't work on the SP3 installation, so I had to get it from Windows Update.
--As one might expect, it saved quite a bit of time on the post-build Windows Updates. Not counting IE7, Office or hardware drivers, this particular machine has only downloaded half a dozen updates so far.
They can always fix the bugs in SP4. :)
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Granted it's not public, but it's available to download if you've got a technet plus subscription.
HA!
The biggest "bug" that they need to fix is that SP3 makes XP run even faster now than Vista.
Why, you ask? Because gamers and enthusiasts are always on the bleeding edge in terms of graphics technologies, and Microsoft, in their profane, demonic genius, have made DirectX 10 only available on Vista. In other words, for me to get the biggest bang for my buck out of a current-generation card (in my case a Direct X 10.1 compatible, Radeon 3870x2), I have to run Vista. Additionally, while this is not a Vista-specific feature, I'm running a 64-bit OS to take advantage of 4gb of system RAM (2x2GB Corsair "Dominator" 1066mhz DDR2).
Now, the earliest Vista adopters will be gamers and the like -- this is a large target market, and practically 100% of it is guaranteed to move to Vista solely due to DirectX 10. They will help float the company until the more widespread adoption of Vista begins. See, as computer hardware continues to develop, it will become cheaper and more common to have ~2GB of system RAM; current-generation DirectX 10 cards selling for $400 will fall in price to $100 or $50; in other words, the falling price of hardware will make adopting Vista in the future easier. Now, since we're in the future, Microsoft's support for Windows XP has long expired. This means that a wide array of new hacks that compromise the operating system will begin to emerge, as is the usual, except in this case Microsoft won't fix them because XP is no longer "supported." So, assuming you can even find a copy of XP to install, you're essentially installing an inferior product due to discontinued development. Now, also because we're in the future, Crysis probably costs about $20. The budget computer you just bought for $300 is capable of running it. Are you going to pass up the opportunity simply because you don't like M$, and refuse to install Vista? For most, the answer is no. Why? Well, not installing Vista would be harder than installing it (you'd have to find an XP copy, or god forbid, learn Linux), and it would also be less beneficial. Not to mention that many of the early adopters we mentioned earlier (those graphics obsessed gamers) are generally considered the "technically literate" in the social circles they travel in. In other words, people will ask them their opinion of Vista. And since they've used it, they'll tell all of their friends who are considering it that it works great!
Now, let me say that, as an enthusiast, I'm entirely satisfied with Vista SP1. A list of common applications that work in Vista so far has included Hamachi, Steam, Catalyst, Daemon Tools Lite, Azureus, Soulseek, iTunes, Firefox, Avast! Antivirus, Adobe Reader, and WinRAR. Vista was certainly cumbersome on it's initial release, but it is now quite palatable. It even came with the drivers for my Realtek onboard sound already installed, which was impressive, as I have tried to install the Realtek drivers manually on many motherboards and XP installations, usually to such complete, utter, and stunning failure that I ended up just buying a $30 Soundblaster Audigy to stick into any computer whose onboard sound refused to function.
Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers! *Chairs flying in the air at Redmond*
While I'm gleeful that they have to delay shipping a service pack, I'm also pleasantly surprised that they actually *do*.
Maybe the occasional pat on the back for doing something right is just as important as bashing them for doing it wrong.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
download here http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/software/svpk/2008/04/windowsxp-kb936929-sp3-x86-enu_c81472f7eeea2eca421e116cd4c03e2300ebfde4.exe
"What, a Microsoft program stops working in XP? Strange, there is no issue in Vista. Just upgrade to Vista, and all your problems will be solved. May I intrest you in the Ultimate Edition? We are running a special today, $5 off if you order in the next 5 minutes."
I wonder will Microsoft spoil performance in SP3 so their new main product - MS Vista - will suck less compared to XP.
A cynical part of me wonders if SP3 contains breaking changes to make life harder for WINE, and possibly other solutions.
I know it crushes the fantasies Linuxites have, but MS could give a shit about W(h)INE.
MS wants XP broken in favor of *Vista*. If SP3 becomes mandatory (ie, remove other hotfixes and make only SP3 available or make SP3 required for some Genuine Advantage "upgrade") and SP3 becomes known for making XP work worse or slower, it has a good chance of making Vista look better and possibly start gaining people willing to upgrade.
Other than new systems purchased at retail by consumers, Vista has been a colossal failure and MS wants/needs new technology uptake to keep the wheel turning. Sabotaging XP is an excellent way to do this.
in which case it would be rushed to market. Actually it is probably meant to break an old MS product- XP itself, and bring it down to the level of Vista, or lower (which, I concede, would take significant effort)
Really I do
I don't see why I got modded as flamebait. The complaints are perfectly valid, and lo and behold I was right.
Not saying that there aren't other OS's that have these problems off the bat, but really Windows has historically been the worst, either with releases or with Service Pack upgrades.
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