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Software XP SP3 And Vista SP1 Back in Action
Jason Mick (Blog) - May 7, 2008 10:47 AM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 136 comment(s) - last by phxfreddy.. on May 13 at 7:04 AM
After being missing for a week, the service packs are back and ready to upgrade your OS (if you use Windows, that is)

While XP may be nearing its end of life, it still enjoys a large user base and remains a strong seller.  Thus many customers were thrilled when XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) came out, offering a wide variety of improvements. 

Unfortunately it had a compatibility issue with Microsoft Dynamic RMS -- a program for small to medium businesses -- which caused Microsoft to decide to pull the pack, leaving users in the dark.  A similar problem was found in Vista SP1, and while Microsoft did not pull Vista SP1, it halted its automatic distribution.

Well happy days are ahead, as both Vista SP1 and XP SP3 are back in action.  The packs went live on Tuesday.  The XP SP3 is available here.  Microsoft solved the MSD RMS issue with a hotfix, which can be had here.  Microsoft suggests you install this hotfix before installing XP SP3 to avoid issues.

The third service pack weighs in at 316 MB, for those interested.  Over 1,100 hotfixes/patches are included in the pack.  Also included are new features, among which are the handy Network Access Protection and Black Hole Router Detection.

Most will agree that while the delay of XP SP3 might be slightly embarrassing for Microsoft, the company did a remarkably good job of fixing the problem quickly and getting the packs back online.  The whole process only took a week, lying to rest customer fears caused by Microsoft failing to disclose when the packs would be available again.

Windows Update is also back to automatically distributing the pack once again.  Users who disabled the feature can re-enable it to get the pack automatically without any effort.

Microsoft recently announced that it will likely plan to stick to its June 30th end of life date for XP.  However, many manufacturers will continue to support it after the date.  The new XP SP3 provides one more compelling reason for users to enjoy this mature operating system, which has been fine tuned over the course of three major service packs. 

Some users have expressed that they plan on using XP until Windows 7 comes out in 2010.  While this approach certainly isn't for everyone, those users and the many IT users who deploy XP will be pleased that the service pack is once again available.

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By DEVGRU on 5/7/2008 11:03:02 AM , Rating: 4
Ok, I'm not a business major. Hell, I never even finished college. I work in IT!

I understand that Microsoft wants people to move to Vista. I get that. But even my basic, rudimentary knowledge of the business world tells me that if your company makes a product that millions of people around the world still want, YOU SHOULD KEEP SELLING IT .

I mean we all know how much Microsoft apparently hates making money. If I was a shareholder, I'd be pissed!




By Motoman on 5/7/2008 11:07:46 AM , Rating: 5
The problem, mein freund, is that keeping XP on the shelves and selling it alongside (i.e. instead of, effectively) Vista is tantamount to admitting that Vista is teh suck.

The company line is that Vista is The Way(tm) and therefore is infinitely better than all previous OSs, such as, say, XP. Any deviation from that would be admitting that they are wrong...that Vista is not The Way(tm) and that the Great Vole of Redmond(c) has erred mightily.

Not something that Sir Bill "Pearly" Gates wants to do.


By mmntech on 5/7/2008 11:19:38 AM , Rating: 2
That's probably true. Vista has not been performing as well as Microsoft thought it would. I'm sure you'll get some idiot fanboy on here saying Vista's bad perception is caused by people spreading "FUD" (I hate that word). Microsoft did spend a lot on R&D for it which is why they obviously want to push it. Still, it's foolish to stop selling XP. There is still a huge market for it for low power applications such as the Eee PC and for legacy systems. If they don't fill that void, somebody will, ie Ubuntu.

I'm personally waiting for Windows 7. It seems like it's going to be more streamlined and I hear they're going back to just two versions of the OS. I can wait a year or two.


By imperator3733 on 5/7/2008 1:15:52 PM , Rating: 2
Microsoft is going to still sell XP Home for low cost laptops like the Eee. The only difference is XP will ONLY be made available to those manufacturers, and not to consumers and other system builders.

Where did you hear that Windows 7 is going to be just two versions? I hadn't heard that.


By Mitch101 on 5/7/2008 1:28:18 PM , Rating: 2
I thought about waiting for the next version of Windows too however since Service Pack 1 for Vista and turning off UAC Its really grown on me. There are a lot of things I can do in Vista now that would cause XP to choke. For the record I use Vista Ultimate 64bit edition.

There is the occasional quick freeze on an application that recovers with a little patience but its just that Vista acts different than if the application were not generating any CPU cycles on XP. XP I would get a blank Window but in Vista you get a greyed out screen. At first I thought Vista was the problem but really its just that Vista acts different than XP when an application is not responding but it always comes back. Its a lot quicker to say application not responding but its comes back.

Sure its a little learning curve but a quick google search and you can find where that feature is now located or how to get to device manager.

The only issue I had is I got a new USB device and used Vista to convert fat to ntfs it performance was pretty poor till I scandisked and defragged on a XP machine and now the USB device runs great. Could be the lack of a USB driver for my Mobo?

My mobo is very new and although my USB ports work there is no USB driver from the manufacturer for my mobo yet. This is Gigabytes fault but the USB ports work so I am not sure what to make of this.

Bottom line Vista is stable for me at least as stable as XP and in some cases better than XP and I havent had a blue screen in some 6 years? Not since Windows 2000.

Oh yea I too wish there were drivers for my 6 year old scanner and 2 year old video capture card but really its time I upgraded them to something newer anyway. They were cheapies or one could say the manufacturer is to blame because they hope I buy a newer capture card or scanner from them.

Vista is not Windows ME. While I agree It was pretty useless before SP1 but now its pretty darn good.

I will let my next video card solve any DX9 vs DX10 gaming performance differences between XP and Vista. After all DX10 has a huge video jump potential and I'm looking toward the future. My Radeon 3870 card is doing quite well and if those lazy developers threw in a few lines of DX10.1 like Assassins Creed did then the issue would be pretty moot.

Goodbye XP you served me well. Yes I said it and I was a die hard XP guy.


By sprockkets on 5/7/2008 3:31:50 PM , Rating: 2
Interesting, a grey screen. Compiz on Linux does that as well.

I am also going to use Vista now, now that SP1 is out, and turning off superfetch kills a lot of the endless HDD activity, and its mantra of wasting time to save time.

But, those gelatin wobbly windows on compiz and other stuff on compiz-fusion put aeroglass to shame. It's like they came up with only 3 different effects on Vista and stopped (minimize/restore, open/close, flip 3D).

I still need XP though. For whatever reason, I try, even with admin rights, to install the same lame codec from the very old divx3 package, the only one that works for me for Leadtek's winfast PVR, and Vista never registers it, even though it said it did (Microsoft is still castrating the directshow mp3 codec by only allowing poor bitrates and sampling rates to record with. Whenever I install the divx3 program, it always says "The file you are wanting to install already exists. Overwrite the newer file?". When the old version gets put back in, all the usual and correct mp3 bitrates are there). The older version of their PVR software also has better tv quality, than the new aeroglass compatible version.


By Pirks on 5/7/2008 4:48:18 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
turning off UAC
Why would you turn it off? Did you reconfigure your system/devices/etc several times a day? What kind of admin activities did you do so often that you had to turn off UAC?

I found myself not seeing any UAC propmpts for weeks (after some initial activity when I was tweaking my freshly installed Ulti x64), so I wonder what are you guys doing that UAC is always keeping you twitchy?


By Mitch101 on 5/7/2008 4:56:53 PM , Rating: 2
Hey Pirks,

I will turn it back on but right now I have the original drive from my XP build in a USB enclosure and every time I deleted a directory it was prompting me with UAC popups.


By del on 5/11/2008 11:21:39 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, I don't understand why so many power users want to disable UAC. I actually like UAC, and I am a power user. I hardly ever see any UAC prompts. Here's hoping UAC is in Windows 7.


By Mojo the Monkey on 5/7/2008 3:25:00 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
I'm personally waiting for Windows 7. It seems like it's going to be more streamlined and I hear they're going back to just two versions of the OS. I can wait a year or two.


yeah, we heard about release dates before Vista too. Do you honestly think MS isnt going to do what they ALWAYS do and push back the release date 6 months at a time for 3-4 cycles before releasing? I just think its ridiculous to think a company with their record is going to be on time -this time- because they say so.


By Ananke on 5/7/2008 12:42:15 PM , Rating: 1
Microsoft has let's say 90% of the OS market. A market which doesn't indefinitely rise, and as a monopoly their market share stop rising either / you cannot go further that 100% of market share/. From a business point is important the dynamic of revenues, not the size itself. So, they periodically must artificially create growth in market share, i.e. older users upgrade or buy new product. Otherwise the stock price goes down, which is the important thing for investors.
The same happens at present with Apple IPod business. In mp3 player market they become sort of monopoly, so their market share doesn't accelerate expansion, i.e. even if it growths, it growth is deaccelerated. Apple choose to conquer new markets, something that MS pursues, but given the size of the OS business for MS, it is more logical to push towards customers towards OS upgrades, than creating new markets /aka Mobile, Int Addvertisement and so on/.
That was my business point. I hope you understood why companies, even monopolies, need new sales. Another smart move would be to lease software to all customers for a limited time, for example five years. I guess they thought about this and their models show it may prompt customer shift to open source. Although, the new trend of "Live" set by Google business app is exactly this - "pay on demand" which proove to be always more costly than buying "a pack" in the long run. Same as pay per view TV, or pay per song model. This are all recent very profitable business models.


By Motoman on 5/7/2008 1:00:00 PM , Rating: 1
...I know why M$ puts out a new OS and then discontinues the old on. The issue on this particular one is that Vista is a poor product...and there's not really anything wrong with XP. This is categorically NOT like any previous new-Windows relase...it bears no resemblance to the release of Win2K over Win98/Me, and it bears no resemblance to the release of XP over Win2k. There were compelling reasons to buy the new OS in those instances, and the new OS was demonstrably better than the old.

In this case, Vista is not as good a product as the one it is replacing. At the very least, there is no real added value in doing so - XP works great (or at the very least, as well as Vista) and Vista provides no compelling reasons to move from XP.

So what M$ is doing is shooting itself in the foot with this one...there are consumers who will simply NOT BUY a new PC/OS because they DON'T WANT Vista. That's lost revenue, pure and simple. There are also consumers who will by a Mac instead (shudder)...which is worse than lost revenue, because not only did M$ lose that sale, but they wound up driving more revenue for a competitor.

Linux is *still* not a viable option for 99% of the world, so don't bother.

Windows is, essentially, a monopoly (in the face of Linux, Mac, whatever) because of the 90%+ of all software in the world that *only* runs on Windows.

M$ is hurting itself in terms of revenue, and losing customer goodwill (inasmuch as M$ has customer goodwill) by discontinuing a good product that people want to own in lieu of a poor product that people do not want to own.

That, in business terms, is why M$ is wrong.


By Motoman on 5/7/2008 3:25:33 PM , Rating: 1
OK, I'm confused. Can someone point out why this comment got voted down to negative? If for no other reason than my own edification...


By Belard on 5/8/2008 9:32:34 PM , Rating: 2
Perhaps those who get voted down because some MS fanboy gets their little feelings hurt should be voted down... then we can ALL vote each other down and nobody will read anything because some whimp votes people down because of an opinion rather than childish insults, cursing or plain stupidity.

And Apparently - you get voted down for saying "you got voted down becasue"... Hmmm ya know, this is like whats in MS EULA... in basic, you have no right to say anything bad about MS Office, Windows if you agree with the EULA. Opening the package means you agree with the EULA, even if you have not read it. Agree to this EULA means you'll agree to future EULA changes that are included in downloaded updates... Yep, that's Microsoft.


By DeuceHalo on 5/7/2008 8:43:15 PM , Rating: 2
First -
Just because you buy a new PC with Vista doesn't necessarily mean you're "stuck" with it. Microsoft allows end users to downgrade if you have either Vista Business or Vista Ultimate. Just ring up Microsoft with your Vista key in hand to activate XP.

Ref - http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/f/4/5f4c8...

Second -
"It bears no resemblance to the release of XP over Win2k" - Ummm, the way I remember things, folks balked over upgrading to XP when it came out as well. This is no different.


By PitViper007 on 5/8/2008 3:18:04 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
"It bears no resemblance to the release of