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Windows Operating Systems Software IT

XP Service Pack 2 Breaks FireWire 55

Posted by Zonk from the oops dept.
Diluted writes "FireWire Depot is reporting about a problem with Service Pack 2 for Windows XP. Apparently not liking the competition from 1394b, Microsoft decided to limit S800 devices to a quarter of their speed capability."
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XP Service Pack 2 Breaks FireWire More

XP Service Pack 2 Breaks FireWire

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  • Fixed? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bdipert ( 244974 )
    I thought this was fixed in a subsequent patch?

  • What the...? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KILNA ( 536949 ) * <kilna@kilna.com> on Friday April 15, 2005 @02:56PM (#12247279) Homepage Journal
    Why the hell would Microsoft consider a device connection bus standard to be competition? That statement makes absolutley no sense.
    • Call me crazy, but I think it was an attempt at humor.

      Whenever Redmond is found to have broken something, it's usually a competitor's product. And now it is being reported that 1394b is slowed down because of XP SP2. I'm guessing that Slashdot's filters discarded the <sarcasm> tags.

      • Actually the OP was serious, in another post he equates Apple involvement in Firewire and Intel involvement in USB as reason enough for Microsoft to consider Firewire "competition". Never mind the fact that they address two completely different usage profiles. When's the last time you saw a Firewire PC keyboard, or a consumer DV camera with USB-based video transfer?

        Lets time-shift a bit and look for a theoretical scenario in the past that would be similar to today's situation to see if it makes any sens

        • A bunch of cameras are coming out with USB 2.0 ports, so the lackeys at CompUSA told me. They couldn't SHOW me one, because they're idiots, but they insist that firewire camcorders are dead and USB 2.0 is the new hotness.
          • I've seen a few combo video/still cameras that do data transfer for the still camera over USB and video over Firewire. That only further proves my point that they're only marginally competing busses without 100% overlap.

    • Re:What the...? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 )
      "Why the hell would Microsoft consider a device connection bus standard to be competition?"

      I actually had somebody give me shit a couple of weeks ago denying a statement I made about Slashdot sensationalizing MS news stories.
  • I'm glad to see that they have a fix for the problem listed. I think it's nice that MS acknowledges the problem with a fix. Not sure how degrading the speed is a "fix" or a security feature...

  • Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @02:56PM (#12247288)
    "Apparently not liking the competition from 1394b"

    Since when did Microsoft compete with FireWire? The only real competition to 1394 is USB, and that's an Intel technolog.

    That, and Microsoft has already released a patch.
  • to be honoest, if all it broke on my machine was firewire I'd be okay, but it also takes down the internet while it's at it, forcing me to have to restart the dhcp service about every 30 seconds or so for it to actually allow me to get out on the net. Has anyone else had this problem, if so how did oyu solve it? (sorry, I'm a Debian person, not an XP person.)

  • Fixed with patch (Score:5, Informative)

    by jfb3 ( 25523 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:01PM (#12247390)
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885222 [microsoft.com]

  • Patch? Fix? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Diluted ( 178517 )
    Not fixed in a patch or released as a hotfix, but their 'fix' is for the person affected to edit their registry. Your average user is not going to want to edit their registry.

    As far as the competition angle... USB is intel's protocol, firewire is largely driven by apple... that was my point about competition.

    The real issue here is taht Ms's monopoly allows them to crush a protocol if they so desire.
    • As far as the competition angle... USB is intel's protocol, firewire is largely driven by apple... that was my point about competition.


      The real issue here is taht Ms's monopoly allows them to crush a protocol if they so desire.


      Dude, take off that shiny metal headgear. Why would Microsoft exert influence on a standard that doesn't affect their bottom line? You've pulled this out of your ass, ever considered a career in celebrity 'news'???
      • *takes off his tinfoil hat*

        Maybe it is conspiratorial of me to make that suggestion but really... why else would they do it? I can't think of any security or stability reasons, unless their handling of S800 devices is so terrible that it can't keep up.

        The only plausible reason in my mind is that Microsoft has some sort of problem with 1394 and because they have the market share to do so, they are able to cripple it into non-usefulness.
        • Maybe it is conspiratorial of me to make that suggestion but really... why else would they do it?

          Yeah, because you know, mistakes never ever happen, and Microsoft never ever ships bugs they didn't mean to put in their software in the first place.

          Stupid jackass.

    • Could someone clarify?

      I thought the problem with Firewire was resolved with a patch [microsoft.com]. But the resolution also mentions a Registry hack.

      However, the Download page does not mention any registry hack [microsoft.com].

      Is this problem fixed by the patch, or by a registry hack? Either? Both? Neither?

    • Re:Patch? Fix? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by mebob ( 57853 )
      They may have been driven by those companies, but nobody is really battling for either. Intel happily includes firewire on most of their boards and apple includes USB2 in all their computers now.

      Now thing might change a little with wireless USB, bluetooth, etc,.. but a company is always going to back a technology more when they played a role or invested something into its creation.

    • "The real issue here is taht Ms's monopoly allows them to crush a protocol if they so desire."

      Why do I have the feeling that if the little line about MS not liking the competition wasn't in the article, it wouldn't have been posted?

  • Service Pack 2 has been out for what, 6 months?

    And you just noticed that Firewire was broken?

    Why are some people just starting to complain NOW, months after SP2 has been released?

    For the record, I haven't had any noticable problems with SP2. It works fine for me.

    Some of our developers had problems, but that's because they weren't smart enough to to deal with the integrated firewall. They were complaining when *spyware* was attempting to establish an outside connection.

    Also for the record, I'm not the w

  • and this is news? (Score:5, Informative)

    by doofusclam ( 528746 ) <slash@seanyseansean.com> on Friday April 15, 2005 @03:03PM (#12247426) Homepage
    http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17794

    Win XP SP2 "turns Firewire 800 into Firewire 100"


    Oops a daisy

    By INQUIRER staff: Wednesday 11 August 2004, 09:55
    THE MODERATOR of the RME forum has warned that installing Windows XP SP2 can lead to the bus speed being limited to 100Mbit/s.

    Matthias Carstens posted the message on the RME forum yesterday, but says it's not a problem particular to RME products. He said: "It affects any Firewire 800 device. If you have a FW800 PCI card and an FW 800 hard disk, go see the bits come one by one through the Firewire cable".

    RME, he said, was aware of the problem for some time, but "didn't really imagine that Microsoft would have the guts to try to bury an existing standard. We just downloaded the final public version and it is simply unbelievable".

    He said that some companies are trying to sell Firewire 800 drivers so everything will be hunky-dory. But, he said, these drivers probably won't work correctly with a Fireface 800.

    But phew, there is an answer. He said after the SP2 update, if you install the old SP1 Firewire drivers all will be well. "In our tests this solved all problems and brought back the old performance and compatibility".

    He said RME will release detailed instructions on how to do this today.


  • Microsoft just dealt what many leading experts think will be a fatal blow to the primary competition of Windows XP, 1394b, also known as Firewire. Now that Firewire has been dealt with, Windows XP will have a much better chance of maintaining market share.
  • Patched November 4, 2004.

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885222 [microsoft.com]
  • WinXP updates break Canon Multipass devices. This happened to my client. Their devices mystically stopped to work one day. After reinstalling WinXP, they resumed their operation for one or two days. Uninstalling "hotfixes" helped!

    Now they have to use SP2. Say goodbye to canon multipass... Canon refuses to fix drivers.
  • I found this out the hard way.

    I have 2 FW devices: a canopus media bridge (advc 100 - converts analog video to FW/dv) and a regular old external FW disk (ide bridge inside).

    plug one in, wait till its seen, then plug the other one in. both are seen.

    do some video capture to the external FW drive. works fine.

    unplug the camera. leave the drive connected.

    oops! drive goes from NTFS to 'raw' and loses its 'letter'.

    have to reset the whole thing to get the drive to be seen again.

    buggy buggy buggy. sigh.
  • From MS site: This problem occurs because Windows XP SP2 changes 1394b ports to S100 speed when you upgrade.

    That's painful. The last S100 bus system I had only ran at 6MHz, and only had 64kb of RAM. But hey, those dual 8" floppy SSDD disk drives were schweet!

  • Hmmm...XP SP2 has been out now how long? And, this problem was just "found"?

    Peek into the Future:

    Year 2025 - It's been reported that Microsoft's Windows XP SP2 has broken...THE SAN ANDRES FAULT. In-depth coverage at 11!

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