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Vista SP1 Update Locks Out Some Users

Posted by kdawson on Fri Feb 15, 2008 11:07 AM
from the lather-rinse-repeat dept.
Echostorm writes with word that Windows Vista SP1, which began rolling out via Automatic Update, has left some users' machines unbootable. The update loops forever on "Configuring updates: Stage 3 of 3 — 0% complete. Do not turn off your computer." "Shutting down"... restart and loop. Echostorm notes having found traces of what sounds like the same bug in early beta releases of SP1. It's unclear how many users are affected. So far there is no word on a fix from Microsoft.
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[+] 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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  • by kellyb9 (954229) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:08AM (#22435100)
    They actually DO beta test their software, right??????????
  • by KublaiKhan (522918) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:09AM (#22435110) Homepage Journal
    I know that they're said to have copied the concept of a GUI from apple (who, yes, stole it from PARC) but I didn't think Microsoft would follow the iBrick update also.
  • ROFLMAO (Score:4, Informative)

    About 10 minutes before this popped up, I got my first client call with this symptom.

    Ahhh, Microsoft. Thank you for all the work you throw my way!

    The only thing I can confirm so far is yep, Safe Mode don't work.
  • So in other words, it IS an improvement!
  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna (970587) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:10AM (#22435130) Journal

    Q: Vista SP1 gets locks up the machines after update.

    A: [x] Fiction (wins a T-Shirt)
        [ ] Fact (truth but no T-Shirt to you bad boy.)

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        From OSX's `dictionary application:

        sarcasm |särkazm|

        noun

        the use of irony to mock or convey contempt : his voice, hardened by sarcasm, could not hide his resentment. See note at wit .

        ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: from French sarcasme, or via late Latin from late Greek sarkasmos, from Greek sarkazein 'tear flesh,' in late Greek 'gnash the teeth, speak bitterly' (from sarx, sark- 'flesh' ).
  • by TrippTDF (513419) <hilandNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday February 15 2008, @11:12AM (#22435160)
    this time, it's with "One Infinite Loop"
  • by elrous0 (869638) * on Friday February 15 2008, @11:12AM (#22435174)
    Eventually the loop will stop, and the installation will complete. But only if you BELIEVE!
  • by plopez (54068) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:13AM (#22435186)
    Seriously, sounds like a version issue. An SCM (Software Configuration Management). Seriously, I worked for smaller companies that were serious about versioning and regression testing. Is it my imagination or does MS seem more and more like a software organization that is out of control?
    • by porkThreeWays (895269) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:18AM (#22435252)
      Seriously guys, seriously.
    • by cliffski (65094) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:19AM (#22435274) Homepage
      more likely they are a software company rolling out tens of millions of copies of an O/S onto completely random hardware. I'd be amazed if there were not a few problems.
      • by BUL2294 (1081735) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:44AM (#22435642)
        Bullshit... The amount of hardware variability has declined over the past 15-odd years due to consolidation and Microsoft's insistence...

        * How many CPU makers are out there today? 2. (Transmeta is dead).
        * How many companies make chipsets (north/southbridges) today? 4(?)
        * GPU makers? 3.
        * BIOS vendors? 3(?)
        * Sound cards? 2 (Intel & Creative)
        * Expansion interfaces? 2 (PCI, PCI-Express)

        Now, look back to 1993-1995. How many no-name brand BIOSes caused problems? How many brands of VGA chipsets were there? CPU makers? (Think Intel, AMD, Cyrix, NexGen, C&T,...) How many expansion interfaces were there (ISA, VLB, PCI, MCA). How many brands had their own incompatible hardware, where Microsoft's HIMEM.SYS had special switches for (AST, Everex, IBM PS/2, etc.) All of these worked well with DOS/Win3.x and Win95.

        No, this is Microsoft's way of saying "we don't know what's wrong with Vista!"
        • 3 GPU makers? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Khyber (864651) <khyberkitsune@gmail.com> on Friday February 15 2008, @12:31PM (#22436332) Journal
          What are you smoking? S3 is still around. Matrox as well. Then there's Intel, ATi, nVidia, then there's 3DLabs. I think Trident might be around, but only in a pure 2D platform. Cirrus Logic is also still in business, though whether or not they still manufacture GPUs is unknown to myself.
        • by AstroPHX (830253) on Friday February 15 2008, @12:58PM (#22436700)

          Your funny math makes my brain hurt.

          The number of vendors is a horrible measurement. Try variants on for size:

          How many CPU variants does one of the two manufacturers currently support? Try over 125. http://products.amd.com/en-us/DesktopCPUResult.aspx?f1=&f2=&f3=&f4=&f5=&f6=&f7=&f8=&f9=& [amd.com] Oh, and that's just for the desktop.

          GPU? NVidia has 38 families of chipsets. At ~5 products for each chipset, you're over 190.

          What about all of the other hardware on a motherboard? Bluetooth, USB, Firewire, network drivers and modems are some of the largest contributers to OS development overhead/headache; tell me, have you ever tried to load up Feisty Ubuntu using a Broadcomm wireless device?!?

          By the way, this doesn't include all of the half-assed components people drop onto their computers like humping dog memory sticks or coffee warmers let alone all of the out of date drivers people have installed on their systems (have you checked your BIOS rev lately?).

          This isn't "Microsoft's way of saying 'we don't know what's wrong with Vista,'" it's Microsoft's way of saying, "we're trying our damnedest to clean this up, but you idiots keep pissing in the pool."

    • It's your imagination if they ever seemed like they were IN control.
    • Is it my imagination or does MS seem more and more like a software organization that is out of control?

      The problem is clearly your imagination. MS has a complete and total grasp on the situation. Their sales rep told me so.
    • by tlhIngan (30335) <slashdot AT worf DOT net> on Friday February 15 2008, @11:31AM (#22435456)

      Seriously, sounds like a version issue. An SCM (Software Configuration Management). Seriously, I worked for smaller companies that were serious about versioning and regression testing. Is it my imagination or does MS seem more and more like a software organization that is out of control?


      It appears that each little division of Microsoft is their own little fiefdom. Take a common DLL - comctl32.dll (common controls). Windows ships with one version. Office ships with another version. Applications (using Visual Studio Redistributables) ship with a third version! Each has features that aren't in the others, so Windows apps get one look, Office another look, and 3rd party apps yet another look.

      In addition, the OS team forked the compiler they use from the development team. It makes sense in one aspect - all developers have a stable toolchain. However, if the dev team breaks something, instead of the Windows team making a big stink, people who use Visual Studio do.

      As far as anyone's concerned, Microsoft might as well be split up into separate companies - they more or less act that way anyhow. Code's taken from one team and forked, improvements aren't folded back in, etc.
  • by Megor1 (621918) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:13AM (#22435192) Homepage
    You can't download SP1 yet from Microsoft, in fact its not due out for weeks...
    • by nicklott (533496) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:35AM (#22435518)
      Who modded this Offtopic? The summary says "which began rolling out via Automatic Update", which is just wrong. Admittedly they might want to have caught this a touch earlier, but it's not public yet, nevermind auto updating people's machines. OSS FUD I say...
      • by nicklott (533496) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:44AM (#22435634)
        In fact, all the posts to the thread in the article were made after this article was posted to slashdot and by posters with a post count of 1. They talk about SP1 on auto-update (which the original post didn't) yet that can't possibly be true because that's not the case. And oh look, echostormfury is one of the posters, could he perchance be related to the Echostorm who posted the story? I smell bullshit...
  • by molex333 (1230136) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:15AM (#22435214) Homepage
    Microsoft will be releasing a worm to fix this problem early next week!
  • Brick?!? (Score:5, Funny)

    by gardyloo (512791) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:18AM (#22435246)
    I'm sorry. I can't believe I read a summary about a computer problem without it being called "bricking". What the hell is wrong with the world?!?
      • Re:Brick?!? (Score:4, Funny)

        by Opportunist (166417) on Friday February 15 2008, @12:30PM (#22436308)
        Hmm... it feels like there is some subliminal message hidden in there somewhere, but I just can't find it...

        Anyway, who cares? I suddenly feel like it's time to can Windows altogether and finally do the switch to Linux.
  • by Radhruin (875377) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:29AM (#22435430)
    Something similar happened [slashdot.org] with the 10.4.11 update as well.
  • by sharkey (16670) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:31AM (#22435468)

    Echostorm writes with word that Windows Vista SP1, which began rolling out via Automatic Update, has left some users' machines unbootable.

    A forum post from last month about issues with the Vista SP1 Release Candidate (prerelease code, just to let Echostorm know). SP1 does not go out via auto updates until next month, and is only officially available to select system builders and beta testers now.

    It's unclear how many users are affected.

    I counted 5, including the guy who yanked his power cable and trashed his filesystem.

    So far there is no word on a fix from Microsoft.

    It might possibly be fixed in the RTM version of SP1. Who knows? Certainly not Echostorm, who is having a poopie because he hosed his own PC and is trying to drum up a whine-fest about it. Definitely not kdawson either, who posted this because, well, it's kdawson.

    This is taking slashvertisments to the preschool tantrum level.

  • by BroadbandBradley (237267) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:33AM (#22435496) Homepage
    you can download a disk image, boot from the disk, and start being productive. It's a proven fix that worked for me.

    Vista Repair Disk [kernel.org]

    I used it as soon as I started having problems with Vista on a new work computer and it's been smooth sailing ever since.
     
  • by smooth wombat (796938) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:40AM (#22435570) Homepage Journal
    of the situation years ago when a patch went that killed ones network connection. The solution from Microsoft? Download a new patch to correct the situation.

    Um, yeah.
  • I call Shenanigans (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 15 2008, @11:43AM (#22435628)
    Since Vista SP1 isn't even being deployed via Windows Update until next month, this whole story reeks of BS...
  • ASUS P5N-E (Score:5, Informative)

    by nick_davison (217681) on Friday February 15 2008, @01:28PM (#22437094)
    It may well not be SP1.

    A very large number of owners of ASUS P5N-E motherboards are reporting the same issue simply with recent updates. It's quite likely the SP1 update is simply triggering the same issue.

    Here's a google search on the issue [google.com]. You'll notice a common thread is that P5N-E owners have the issue, users of other motherboards don't see it.

    It's been happening since mid January, from what I can gather, and I'm not finding any solutions to it yet.
    • That's a dillution of the term "brick", and it's also not true. Except in the case of a really destructive update (as in, corrupts the FS or similar), if an update ever renders my Linux unbootable, I'll just pop in the install CD and use it to roll back the changes.

      Certainly not what I'd call an "easy" process -- easy for me, maybe -- but it's by no means a brick.
    • by Coopjust (872796) on Friday February 15 2008, @11:40AM (#22435576)
      Vista SP1 isn't available publicly yet, unless you hop on The Pirate Bay.

      Microsoft placed 6 weeks between code finalization and public release for 6 weeks of driver testing; some drivers were not properly written, and MS wanted to work with hardware manufacturers/OEMs to find hardware with problems. Everyone bitched about how technical users should get it early.

      Then these same people download SP1 from an unauthorized source, and bitch when it breaks their system. They downloaded an update without letting Microsoft work the kinks out, and they didn't get the update from MS. No automatic download was involved in this.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Reading a little more of the forum confirms my theory about it mostly being the Refresh RC 2 ("Which should be the same as the RTM").
      I havn't found a single thread about someone saying anything about windows update.