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Microsoft Pulls Vista SP1 Update

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thu Feb 21, 2008 11:00 AM
from the undo-undo-undo dept.
Microsoft
1shooter writes "news.com reports that Microsoft is withdrawing SP1 for Vista. Nick White, Microsoft product manager blogged 'We've heard a few reports about problems customers may be experiencing as a result of KB937287,' wrote White. 'Immediately after receiving reports of this error, we made the decision to temporarily suspend automatic distribution of the update to avoid further customer impact while we investigate possible causes.'"
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Submission: Microsoft pulls Vista SP1 update by 1shooter (185361)
[+] Technology: Vista Service Pack One Almost Here 286 comments
arogier writes "After numerous delays and an actual release reversal, the official release date for Vista service pack one has been set for Tuesday, March 18th on Windows Update and Microsoft Downloads. It will be released as an automatic update on April 18th. 'It's unclear so far how a February snafu will affect SP1's roll-out. Last month, after Microsoft pushed a pair of prerequisite patches to users, some reported that their machines refused to finish installing one of the fixes, then went into an endless series of reboots. Several days later, Microsoft pulled the update from automatic delivery, said it was working on a solution and promised it would "make the update available again shortly after we address the issue."' It would be a good time for those planning to adopt early to perform requisite backups and locate their restore media."
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Microsoft Pulls Vista SP1 Update 50 Comments More /

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  • Amiable Caucasian (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stanistani (808333) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:03AM (#22503202) Homepage Journal
    >Nice White, Microsoft product manager...

    Could some please inform Dave Chapelle of this person's name? ...and videotape his unedited response?

  • What? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Brian Gordon (987471) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:03AM (#22503222)
    What happened to problems with KB938371? Their little Windows Update updater that paves the way for the SP1 update is causing big problems here where I work- I'm looking at 3 machines right now that it's refusing to install on.

  • They need to think about this differently (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:03AM (#22503224)
    If they imagine Vista to be a horrible cancer, and SP1 to be chemotheraphy, then this all seems better. Sure, it's going to make some sick and die, but for a few, it's going to be a cure for their problems. I say let it out and let people take their chances.

  • NOT SP1 (Score:5, Informative)

    by ilikepi314 (1217898) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:05AM (#22503256)
    I saw this on the firehose last night and it confused me then, it should have been edited.

    The problem is not SP1, but rather an update for Windows Update/installation that is being installed in anticipation of SP1 next month. It's a required upgrade to run SP1, but it is not SP1 itself.

    • Re:NOT SP1 (Score:5, Informative)

      by gravis777 (123605) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:27AM (#22503604)
      I totally agree. This is about an update that was released on Windows Update, and then withdrawn. SP1 has not been released yet to the end user.

      This update just installs updates, and is a PREREQUESIT to SP1. Much as you have to install the Microsoft Genuine Advantage tool in XP before you can install Internet Explorer 7.
      Slashdot really needs to start validating their sources

      http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937287 [microsoft.com]
    • WTF? This morning my Windows update pushed KB936330, "Windows Vista Service Pack 1 for x64-based systems". Was this a mistake, or has SP1 for Vista-64 been released to the public?

      • Re:NOT SP1 (Score:5, Informative)

        by Rary (566291) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:45AM (#22503844)

        If you cannot install this update because MS has pulled it, how can you install SP1?

        You can't, whether you install this update or not, because SP1 has not been released yet. It's scheduled for release next month.

        SP1 is stopped for now.

        SP1 has not even started yet. This is yet another /. article seemingly about SP1 which actually isn't about SP1 becuase SP1 hasn't even been released. This is about a prerequisite to SP1.

        • Re:NOT SP1 (Score:4, Informative)

          by LiquidCoooled (634315) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:51AM (#22503946) Homepage Journal
          Read the article next time.
          The release next month is for general public, that does not mean it is not available.

          Vista SP1 is already available to subscribers to the Microsoft Developer Network but won't receive a formal public release until mid-March.

          That certainly looks to me like there were people able to install and run SP1.
          They now cannot install SP1 even if they wanted to.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Rary (566291)

            Read the article next time. The release next month is for general public, that does not mean it is not available.

            Fair enough. However, all they've actually stopped is the automatic update. I'm not on a Vista machine right now so I can't confirm this, but suspending the automatic update usually means it's still available as an option, as this problem only applies to a small subset of users. So, those MSDN subscribers who are desperate to install SP1 can still do so. Plus, another poster has pointed out that it actually is possible to install SP1 without first installing this update. I haven't tried it myself, so take

              • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                by ShatteredArm (1123533)
                Instead of rolling out the prerequisite three weeks before SP1, they could roll it out two weeks prior. It depends on how long that fix is delayed.

  • Not a shock... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kev647 (904931) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:06AM (#22503266)
    Poor Microsoft...why can't they seem to get things right from the beginning? With all that money and power, they should be able to develope higher quality software. It just doesn't make sense why they wouldn't or can't.

    • Re:Not a shock... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:13AM (#22503380)
      The money goes to
        Marketing Marketing Marketing
      not
        Developers Developers Developers

    • Re:Not a shock... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Macthorpe (960048) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:22AM (#22503528) Journal
      Because you can test on ten thousand combinations of software and hardware and still hit less than 1% of the possible system configurations that exist?*

      *Numbers from my arse - you get my point, though.

      • Re:Not a shock... (Score:5, Informative)

        by ColdWetDog (752185) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:38AM (#22503772) Homepage
        Yeah. Look you pack of yapping three inch tall dogs even blessed St. Job's stable of magic coding elves riding glowing pink unicorns can't seem to get things right half the time.

        Recent OS fix creates problems [macfixit.com].

        Recent OS fix creates problems [macfixit.com].

        Recent OS fix creates problems [macfixit.com].

        Hell, just read Mac Fix it [macfixit.com] and weep (a lot of us Mac users do). Quit yer bitching.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Your.Master (1088569)
          Yes, because there are exactly three components to a computer system, with 3 manufacturers each, and each manufacturer has only one product at any given time.

          Honestly, if you were correct, Microsoft wouldn't ever release software that would later be recalled. Because it would be unbelievably stupid. And no, despite the joking, Microsoft is not unbelievably stupid. Neither is Apple, with its far fewer combinations and still having update errors.

        • Re:Not a shock... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Macthorpe (960048) on Thursday February 21 2008, @12:14PM (#22504296) Journal
          Let's entertain your ridiculous position for a moment.

          Novatech [novatech.co.uk] currently sell the following parts:-

          28 different AM2 motherboards.
          21 different AM2 processors.
          111 different PCI-E graphics cards.
          17 sound cards.

          So far, we have 1,109,556 different combinations of hardware you can build. That already exceeds my "10,000 combinations is less than 1% of the possible hardware and software configurations" comment.

          Bear in mind that we haven't covered:
          SATA/IDE hard drives
          DVD writers
          PCI cards of all types
          USB devices
          Anything from Intel whatsoever.

        • Re:Not a shock... (Score:4, Informative)

          by Richard_at_work (517087) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [ecirpdrahcir]> on Thursday February 21 2008, @12:29PM (#22504544)

          What ten thousand (or let's just say "significant") combinations?

          How many different CPU manufacturers do you have?
          Three common ones - Intel, AMD and VIa.

          How many different GPU manufacturers?
          Hmm, off the top of my head? Nvidia, ATI, SiS, Intel, Matrox...

          Now, how many different chips from each? Several dozen at least.

          How many mainboard chipsets? ...

          Again, off the top of my head - Intel, Via, AMD, Nvidia, SiS, plus loads of no name Tiawanese ones I have seen in the past 2 years.

          And how many different chipsets? Intel alone has several dozen that they have released over the past 5 years....

          If you manage to extrapolate a thousand combinations out of those, without going back more than, say, 5 years (because who the heck has enough time on his hands to install Vista on a machine this old?), you have been very, very creative.


          Sorry, thats easy to do.

  • Others (Score:5, Informative)

    by locokamil (850008) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:08AM (#22503310) Homepage
    KB943899 plays havoc with laptops with misconfigured AHCI devices as well. This isn't reduced performance or anything trival like that; we're talking about full blown "cannot find boot device" BSODs on reboot.

    I had to turn off automatic updates to stop the update from installing.

  • Classic MarketSpeak! (Score:5, Informative)

    by brennanw (5761) * on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:09AM (#22503330) Homepage
    They're pulling the service pack because one of the pre-requisite patches you need to install before the service pack can even be applied is causing hard disk errors and requiring re-formats, although you can use the Vista CD to repair those errors, unless you paid for the downloadable version which doesn't come on a CD, and it only affects a minority of users in "unique circumstances" to begin with.

    I love these guys.

  • Curious - Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bob9113 (14996) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:12AM (#22503376) Homepage
    So there was a story [slashdot.org] about TechNet users wanting, and being denied, early access to SP1 -- apparently specifically so they could do battle testing. I don't know much about TechNet, but I'm guessing those are pretty much the most tech-savvy bundle of customers Microsoft can easily assemble. Why did Microsoft decide to skip the public beta phase with a bunch of expert customers with diverse operating environments and go straight to the world at large?

  • Hardly limited to unique circumstances (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:17AM (#22503448)
    Note the last paragraph of the article: `According to Microsoft's White: "This problem only affects a small number of customers in unique circumstances."'

    I find this a rather incredulous claim considering that in my part-time job providing support to laptop users at my university I had two users with the problem on the same day within an hour of each other. Entirely different laptops, but both fixed with a system restore to before the updates.

    • Re:Hardly limited to unique circumstances (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Shados (741919) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:28AM (#22503618)
      Well, considering universities have a decent amount of people, that the update will be installed on a large number of users at exactly the same time....that you didnt get 200 people at the same time bitching about it means that its a rather uncommon issue. Not uncommon ENOUGH. But uncommon.

  • SP1at (Score:4, Informative)

    by harvey the nerd (582806) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:17AM (#22503452)
    of course, the quick fix will be SP1a temporary.

  • RTFA! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Techogeek (1148745) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:22AM (#22503522)
    It's NICK White, not NICE white. Typo in the /. write-up.

    • Re:The irony, it burns. (Score:5, Informative)

      by ubannoying (1180225) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:06AM (#22503270)
      What burns even more is that the MS Product Manager's real name is Nick. It was a typo.

      • Re:The irony, it burns. (Score:5, Informative)

        by KublaiKhan (522918) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:09AM (#22503324) Homepage Journal
        Looks like a case of autocorrection by the MS Word spellcheck to me. ;-p

        As regards the last Vista-SP1-related-problem article, I found this [sans.org] that mentions said problem and how to solve it, if anyone needs that.

        • Re:The irony, it burns. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by sm62704 (957197) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:32AM (#22503670) Journal
          That's what I hate about Microsoft products. The stupid program assumes you're stupid. The stupid program forces you to do things backwards.

          Microsoft seems to design for the developmentally disabled, and does a bad job of even that. And they can't seem to learn from their horrible mistakes. Did they learn from Clippy? Hell no, now they have the stupid dog on their XP search. If you tell the damned thing to gho away it comes back the next time you do a search. Yeah, I could probably google for a hack to fix it but damn it, I shouldn't have to.

          Linux never does that shit to me.

          • Re:The irony, it burns. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Mateo_LeFou (859634) on Thursday February 21 2008, @11:45AM (#22503858) Homepage
            "Yeah, I could probably google for a hack to fix it but damn it, I shouldn't have to.
            Linux never does that shit to me."

            So true. I've been using Lx since approximately Mandrake 5.1 (ask your dad), and have never had to, um, google up a fix for anything. Nope. Not once. Except of course 3-5 times a week.

            NB: it's well worth it to me.

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by sm62704 (957197)
              ask your dad

              My dad's 76 years old and never used a computer in his life. My first computer was a Timex/Sinclair 1000 I bought when I was about 30, around the time the IBM PC came out.

              I've been using Mandrake/iva since eight point something, and yes I've googled, and asked slashdotters, but that's the price of Linux. If I can't get decent documentation and ease of use, what's the point in spending all that money?

              DOS came on one floppy, and its manual was an inch and a half thick. Windows comes on a CD and it

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by thrash242 (697169)
            That's completely true and I 100% agree, but you have to consider how utterly computer illiterate so many people are to understand why Microsoft products are so dominant. Many people are stupid when it comes to computers.

            Oh, and you can turn Clippy off.

            Vista doesn't even have the dumb thing.

              • Re:The irony, it burns. (Score:4, Funny)

                by C R Johnson (141) on Thursday February 21 2008, @02:31PM (#22506390) Homepage
                For a couple of months two years ago, I was troubled by a noise that my XP laptop would make.... sometimes. Shuuck-Shuuck. Like a slow camera shutter.

                I searched my system and google in vain of finding what this was.

                Then one day I had the search window open and sitting on top of the desktop and I looked at it at just the right time. There was the answer.

                The f-----g dog scratches his ear.
    • SP1 was waiting for me this morning as well. I haven't yet installed it though. I have Ultimate 64. For me, stability has never been a concern and I am running an overclocked e8400 with 8gb of RAM. The system is very smooth. I haven't had any problems running games.. and the few games that I have run in DX10 are pretty nice looking compared to their DX9 versions. If you read the rhetoric on Slashdot you'll think Vista is a complete failure. I decided to try Vista for this new build, despite reading this rhetoric, because I knew that a great majority of the Slashdot posters who post about a Microsoft product have not in fact used the product. Slashdot readers are actually more herdlike and less independent than one might think.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by mrscott (548097)
          I, too, have 8GB of RAM in my home desktop, but only 2GB in my home laptop. Both run Vista quite well. Why 8GB? Tons and tons of VMware virtual machines running all the time for testing. I doubt that the original poster was implying that Vista requires 8GB of RAM!

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