February 20th, 2008
Microsoft Halts Distribution of Troublesome Vista SP1 Prerequisite
By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
You may recall I wrote earlier about the troubles people were having with the prequisite updates that Microsoft said were required in order to get Windows Vista SP1 in March. In a “mea culpa” moment, Microsoft has stopped distribution of the update that seems to be at the heart of the issue, KB937287.
In a post on the official Windows Vista Blog, Microsoft said:
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.
So far, we’ve been able to determine that this problem only affects a small number of customers in unique circumstances. We are working to identify possible solutions and will make the update available again shortly after we address the issue.
It should be noted that those who are having issues can call 1-866-PC-Safety - for free. No charge to calls to this line as its typically used for upgrade issues and security issues. You’ll have to tell them what KB update you’re having a problem with.
I have always said that Microsoft has a much tougher time because of the myriad of hardware their OSes have to support, as opposed to Apple which has a relatively closed set of hardware. That said, you would still hope that something this serious would not make it out of their labs.
I’m also not sure sure about that “unique circumstances” line either. I managed to successfully update 2 PCs last week with the prerequisites, but stopped at that point after hearing about the issues.
BTW, if you are having the reboot issue and don’t have a Vista DVD or a system restore point - good luck! You may need it.
John Corliss says:
MYRIAD OF HARDWARE? Well, perhaps that’s true, but if some standards were agreed upon, this wouldn’t be a problem. And besides, one of the main reasons I won’t be upgrading to Vista is its lack of support for older hardware. IMO, there is ABSOLUTELY no reason that new drivers can’t be written for it.
Maybe if Windows didn’t include (IMO) so much hidden garbage with loaded agendas, they wouldn’t have this problem of dealing with their OS’s complexity.
February 21st, 2008 at 3:49 am
Miami Jack says:
John,
You are missing some points here.
1. Hardware Standards exist, but remember you have different chipsets supporting different CPU’s and technologies such as PCI, PCI Express, AGP and the many revisions in between. Each of these interfaces is manufactured by a slew of video card manufacturers ( MSI, Asus, ATI, Diamond, HP and hundreds of others ) to top that off they make cards with different chipsets like Nvidia, ATI, Intel, Ageia and more. If we do the math on ALL of those possibilities you are talking THOUSANDS! and thats just video cards… you know there are
2. The drivers are made by the video card manufacturers, they don’t want to spend a dime on a video card they haven’t sold in 2 years or more hence No drivers for older equipment. Microsoft shouldn’t be expected to do this either, and truthfully it wouldn’t be worth running equipment that is outdated under a new demanding OS.
3. I don’t think that hidden agendas cause compatibility issues with hardware, maybe others but not that.
There are many things we can complain about with the OS, but we also have be reasonable.
Apple pretty much has it easy, my hardware or the highway!
Do you really want to see Microsoft PC’s?
February 21st, 2008 at 9:41 am
Scott K says:
Linux has the same myriad problem as Windows and in my experience supports a much wider variety of hardware and they manage pretty well.
Sure, there are issues, but Microsoft builds Windows for IA32 and AMD 64. As an example, Ubuntu currently builds for sparc, powerpc, lpia, ia64, i386 (ia32), hppa, and amd64. I would argue that by choosing a narrow range of hardware to build their OS for, Microsoft has a relatively easy time of it.
February 21st, 2008 at 11:22 am
John Corliss, you are an Idiot! says:
As Dirty Harry said: A**holes are like opinions, everybody’s got one… in your case Corliss, you must have more than one, as you see fit to push your uninformed opinion on every topic, whether you know anything about it or not!!!! Please do the intelligent public a favor & shut up!!! What a dildo!!!!
Based upon your comments (on everything), I assume your Mommy doesn’t monitor your internet access (and she should!) near enough!!!
Please do us all a favor & shut up!!!
February 21st, 2008 at 11:51 pm