Last-Minute Glitch Holds Up Windows XP SP3 162
An anonymous reader sends word that Microsoft Windows XP SP3, which had been scheduled to hit the Web today, was pulled back at the last minute. SP3 apparently broke a Microsoft application, Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System. Their solution is to set up a filter to make sure that no system running the affected software will get automatically updated; once the filter is in place, SP3 will be released to the Web. A fix for the incompatibility will follow.
A Dynamics Feature! (Score:5, Informative)
We are looking at the Apache Open For Biz suite now instead and if that doesn't satisfy management they will go with SugarCRM.
why hold back from download site? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Where is it? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:XP SP3 = "Vista Migration Plan" (Score:2, Informative)
I've already built a slipstreamed SP3 machine (Score:4, Informative)
Then, I swapped a blank hard disk into this very HP DV9000 laptop, and did the clean unattended SP3 build.
The build went OK, I installed all my apps with few surprises, and now I'm back up on my old user profile (since I'm on a domain, it even remembers my stored passwords).
A few observations:
--They didn't add too many drivers: SP3.CAB (which presumably includes all the contents of SP2.CAB) is only 19587 KB in size, a mere 7 percent larger than the SP2 driver file released in August 2004.
--I don't think any of those added drivers helped my DV9000: I ended up installing every single device I had to update a few months ago when I last did a clean SP2 install.
--They did, at least, include the High-Definition Audio update in SP3. This is helpful, since Microsoft no longer offers the update for download; building a clean SP2 box with HD Audio previously required one to find a copy somewhere else before the sound -- and often the modem -- drivers would work.
--It doesn't include IE7, and my customized Google installer wouldn't work on the SP3 installation, so I had to get it from Windows Update.
--As one might expect, it saved quite a bit of time on the post-build Windows Updates. Not counting IE7, Office or hardware drivers, this particular machine has only downloaded half a dozen updates so far.
Re:Curious (Score:5, Informative)
Bah. "FUD," I think the word is.
Or even built an OS that contained programs to a reasonable level and didn't always throw crap into the OS directory.
I assume you're talking about DLL hell. This has been solved since at least XP - overwriting a file in a system directory will silently fail if it's being replaced with an older copy. So, replacing winsock.dll version 2.1 with a version 1.0 because you fail at writing an installer will no longer screw up your system.
Think of Service Packs as analogous to kernel patches. Those have been known to screw up a few programs, haven't they?
Re:I've already built a slipstreamed SP3 machine (Score:3, Informative)
If people are going to build slipstreamed XP discs, they need to start using nLite. It allows you not only to slipstream in SP3, but also things like Windows Media Player 11 (nice), and there are packs you can grab from the site to add things like Firefox, Acrobat, Sun Java, FoxIt PDF Reader, and so on.
â¦THENâ¦
You can go through and remove stuff. Windows XP has a ton of drivers for video cards. It doesn't support most nVidia video cards, or newer ATI stuff either, but it DOES support old Trident cards (likely even my old 256kb Trident card). it also has support for (and drivers for) ATM networking (even in the Home version, afaik). You can strip all of that out. Also feel free to take out fax support, dial-up-networking support, Domain support (if you use XP Pro at home, or MCE), and so on.
Take out Windows themes. Add other ones in. I make all my systems default to the MCE 'Royale' theme, because hey, it's nicer. You can increase the maximum TCP connections (instead of patching later); you can enable the uxtheme.dll patch to support non-signed themes. Change default preferences, like disabling theme support entirely, turning off animated menus, setting the default folder view, and others. Remove services you don't need.
I've managed to strip down a 680 MB XP Pro SP2 disc to a 150 MB SP3 disc; at the same time, I configured it for an automated install (with the exception of choosing partitions), I added custom themes, I added drivers for the ethernet cards, video cards, and sound cards I use (including drivers for Parallels and VMWare), and bam. A Windows CD customized precisely for you.
You also save a HUGE amount of space on-disk after install, the install takes less time (a timed test in a VM went from 1.5 hours to 10 minutes).
It's an amazing little tool, and I can't compliment the author enough, other than by letting people know.
Of course, if you have Vista but want to fit it onto a CD instead of filling a DVD, you can check out vLite [vlite.net] also. Strip out all the crap you don't need, and save a ton of time.