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Windows Operating Systems Software Microsoft

Vista SP1 Is Even Less Compatible 278

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Microsoft is now saying that Vista SP1 disables some 3rd party applications. The KB article on SP1 incompatibility states: 'For reliability reasons, Microsoft blocks these programs from starting after you install Windows Vista SP1.' It does link to several vendor support pages with updates or workarounds. Unfortunately, at least one of the suggestions consists of merely disabling part of the program, which could leave you with half an anti-virus solution."
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Vista SP1 Is Even Less Compatible

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  • Re:Zone Alarm? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Insanity Defense ( 1232008 ) on Saturday February 23, 2008 @02:09PM (#22527960)
    Zone Alarm is a firewall and there are both free and commercial versions of it.
  • Article is FUD (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 23, 2008 @02:11PM (#22527976)
    The list of blocked programs encompasses about five programs, four of which have new versions that are compatible with SP1. The entire list of programs with less compatibility is about a dozen programs, and I only counted three of which do not have updated versions that support SP1.
  • by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Saturday February 23, 2008 @02:40PM (#22528186) Homepage
    Microsoft is being extraordinarily abusive towards its customers, in my opinion.

    Customers are being pushed toward buying Windows Vista, even though it is clearly not a finished product, and maybe even not a desirable product.

    If a company needs to buy 1,000 new computers, it is placed in a terrible position. Will it buy Windows XP, a product that Bill Gates, software's Dr. Death, has declared is Mainstream Support Retired [microsoft.com] on 4/14/2009? If it does, it will be forced to pay extra when Microsoft desides to stop supporting Windows XP. And every Microsoft customer needs official support because of the huge, huge number of vulnerabilities that are found in Microsoft products.

    Operating systems don't naturally have so many vulnerabilities. Users of Mac computers don't even bother to run anti-spyware and anti-virus software because they don't have problems. Large numbers of vulnerabilities are a built-in shortcoming of Microsoft products; apparently Microsoft doesn't let its programmers finish their work. Huge numbers of vulnerabilities force an unnatural connection with the supplier; the user is dependent on the supplier for patches; that creates opportunities for control. Vulnerabilities make more money for Microsoft because people are forced to "upgrade".

    When Windows XP was first released, it was very, very buggy. Windows XP became relatively usable without hassles 3 years after its introduction, with the release of SP2. Service Pack 2 for XP fixed more than 330 problems, if I remember correctly, and some of those were not documented.

    We have seen numerous reasons to believe that Windows Vista will also be full of hassles at least until Vista SP2.

    Microsoft's customers were forced to upgrade to Windows XP because Windows 98 had an unstable file system, an unstable registry, and lots of problems with "DLL Hell" and the "Blue Screen of Death". Customers had to endure 3 bad years with Windows XP pre-SP2. Since the release of SP2, there have been only 3 relatively good years with Windows XP, and now Microsoft is arranging pressure to have bad years again.

    That's ugly in my opinion, and I'm only one of many who think that way. This is all being done by billionaires who want nothing more than more money; that's sick.

    Remember, Microsoft managers are sinking the company over the long term to get short-term profit.

    With operating systems, there is lock-in. Linux is not an easy option because re-writing software and re-training is too expensive in most cases. But once a reasonable alternative is available, Microsoft will have difficulty finding customers, it seems to me.

    It's fine if Microsoft introduces a new product. But there should not be pressure to buy the new product until it is stable. The "new" OS product should not be designed to require users to buy new hardware, as it seems is true with Windows Vista. Remember that Microsoft serves the system builders, who want everyone to need more hardware; the final customer can be dis-regarded and dis-repected because of OS lock-in.

    One of the biggest and most respected IT magazines is rejecting Windows Vista: Save Windows XP [infoworld.com]. Quote: "More than 75,000 people have signed InfoWorld's "Save XP" petition in the three weeks since it was launched - many with passionate, often emotional pleas to not be forced to make a change."
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 23, 2008 @03:01PM (#22528354)

    No more Vista-bashing stories until you fix your own problems with Slashcode, wankers.

    Nobody likes the new comment ordering system, not one person, and you will change it back immediately. IANAL, but I think you're probably going to get sued over this. Into bankruptcy.
    The defaults are awful, but with some tweaking the new content system is great, imho.

    Try this. On that annoying floating thing click the "xx More" button until it stops having a number. On the annoying floating thing drag the dark gray bar all the way down. Drag the white bar down until posts modded two and above are expanded with everything else abbreviated (your choice). Then click the "/" button on the annoying floating thing twice. The first time it jumps to the top and still floats, the second it sticks at the top of the story.

    From then on it's actually nice.
  • Re:It's normal (Score:2, Informative)

    by ColdWetDog ( 752185 ) on Saturday February 23, 2008 @03:13PM (#22528448) Homepage
    Are you braindead or something? Need to get out of the basement occasionally?

    Ever seen a Google Search? [google.com]

    Just about 640,000 hits for "problems with XP SP2". Just for the record yung un, ** EVERY ** OS upgrade is going to have problems. Become one with this and you can make a good living dealing with it. Railing against the machine will just give you hemorrhoids.

  • Re:It's normal (Score:5, Informative)

    by LocoSpitz ( 175100 ) on Saturday February 23, 2008 @03:15PM (#22528468)
    Read the KB article before you start spreading crap in the comments. Every program listed as blocked was disabled with the approval of the vendor, and links are provided right in the article to updated, supported versions.
  • by LocoSpitz ( 175100 ) on Saturday February 23, 2008 @03:18PM (#22528492)
    Mod parent down -- and you too. Since you clearly did not take your own advice and follow the links, let me help you out with the facts. The blocked software was blocked with vendor approval. Microsoft's KB article includes links to download current, working versions of affected software.
  • Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) * on Saturday February 23, 2008 @03:23PM (#22528538)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Re:Wine for Windows (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 23, 2008 @03:31PM (#22528590)
    wine does have a windows install look on there download page
  • Re:Blocks or warns? (Score:5, Informative)

    by LocoSpitz ( 175100 ) on Saturday February 23, 2008 @03:38PM (#22528636)
    Tell the company you bought your software from to take a leap; they agreed to the blocking. Or you could, you know, update your security software to the latest, compatible version through the links helpfully provided by Microsoft. Seems like common sense, keeping your security software up to date...
  • by Your.Master ( 1088569 ) on Saturday February 23, 2008 @04:04PM (#22528790)
    My god, that is the most insane strawman argument I have ever seen. You spent the latter two out of those three paragraphs painting a fantasy scenario, then drawing a hugely hyperbolic analogy, and then concluding, based on your fantasy scenario, that this was extortion.

    You could have read the article. AV vendors were locked out of the kernel with Vista, for security reasons, which are valid for all Operating Systems and not smoke-up-the-ass reasons. After complaints, SP1 *adds* a more secure API support so the AV vendors can screw with the kernel again (more carefully). This is Microsoft bending to the AV vendors' collective will. Necessarily, this means AV vendors have to change their support. So they do, and consent to this because this is precisely what they asked for.
  • by ocbwilg ( 259828 ) on Saturday February 23, 2008 @04:13PM (#22528830)
    AV vendors have been claiming antitrust for eight months. SP1 causes great inconvenience to their customers, what a suspicious coincidence. If the vendors were really cooperating SP1 would have contained their improvements, not a little note or a lock out.

    Well, speaking as a customer of one of the affected vendors who uses Vista SP1, I'd have to disagree with you. I've been running Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 since December, and when I upgraded to Vista SP1 2 days ago I had no problems. Trend starts and runs just like it should. From everything that I've read, all it takes to fix the issue is for the affected vendors to release an update to their application. Since most of the applications in question are security applications that should (if installed correctly) be downloading regular definition updates anyway, it's likely that the vast majority of users will get their applications patched before they are able to download SP1. In my example, Trend Micro apparently released the fix before I downloaded SP1. Since SP1 wasn't available from Windows update at the time (the only way I know of to get a legit copy is via MSDN), then it's doubtful that many people have seen the problem at all.

    I know that this particular KB article has gotten a lot of press lately, but I haven't seen one case of a user complaining that they've had the problems described. All of the press seems to be based on the fact that Microsoft found a potential issue and made a KB article about it. That hardly constitutes "great inconvenience to their customers".
  • Re:Vista again? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Atti K. ( 1169503 ) on Saturday February 23, 2008 @07:15PM (#22530118)
    Well what I experienced were: files/directories with non-ascii characters in their names do not show up, vmware doesn't seem to work with the vm stored on ntfs3g partitions, funny permissions in windows on files/dirs created with ntfs3g... There are solutions of course http://www.ntfs-3g.org/support.html [ntfs-3g.org] , but it takes a little tweaking around.
    Don't get me wrong, ntfs3g is a nice piece of software, taking into account that AFAIK, MS doesn't make the NTFS specifications public.
    Anyway the the best way to go is to get rid of your ntfs partitions if you make the switch to Linux ;)

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