(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...XP SP3 cripples some PCs with endless reboots
More from Gregg Keizer of ComputerWorld U.S.:
Installing Windows XP Service Pack 3 sends some PCs into an endless series of reboots, according to posts to a Microsoft support forum.
Jesper Johansson, a former program manager for security policy at Microsoft Corp. and a prominent Windows blogger, has worked with users to tentatively identify the problem as involving only machines using processors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
Messages from frustrated users began accumulating on the XP SP3 support newsgroup Wednesday, just a day after Microsoft released the update to the general public.
“I just installed Windows XP SP3 and after completing the processes and when the system reboots, the system cannot proceed to load the Windows,” said a user identified as “Olin” in a message that kicked off a long thread. “It just displays the flash screen of Windows then after it reboots again.”
Most users who left messages on the forum said that they were unable to boot into Windows Safe mode — a last-ditch way to sidestep the normal boot process for troubleshooting purposes — or revert to a previously saved System Restore point.
Some were understandably upset. “Way to go, Microsoft, releasing the pile of dung called SP3 that hoses your system so bad even Safe Mode isn’t working!” said a user identified as Mike Voss. “Props to your QA guys, they certainly have done their job.”
Johansson, who watched one of his PCs repeatedly reboot after installing XP SP3, traded accounts with several other users on the newsgroup and summarized the results on his blog.
According to Johansson, there appears to be two separate issues. One affects only AMD-equipped PCs sold by Hewlett-Packard Co. “The problem is that HP, apparently along with other OEMs, deploys the same image to Intel-based computers that they do to AMD-based computers,” said Johansson. “Because the image for both Intel and AMD is the same, all have the intelppm.sys driver installed and running. That driver provides power management on Intel-based computers. On an AMD-based computer, amdk8.sys provides the same functionality.”
Running the intelppm.sys driver on an AMD-powered PC isn’t normally an issue, but on the first reboot after a service pack installation, it causes “a big problem,” Johansson said. The machine either fails to boot or crashes and immediately reboots.
The other problem, according to Johansson, also seems to affect only AMD machines, and involves an error message indicating trouble with the PC’s BIOS. Johansson said that the ensuing recommendation to update the BIOS is “most likely not your problem,” but said that the problem may be isolated to a specific motherboard. “Possibly, it is related to computers with the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard in them,” he said.
Johansson also spelled out workarounds for both problems on his blog. The HP issue can be solved by disabling the intelppm.sys driver, while the second fix requires the user to plug in a USB flash drive before booting.
Microsoft was not immediately available for comment early Friday, but someone identified as a Microsoft employee on the support forum had asked users to e-mail him information about the PC’s system configuration and whether they were able to enter Safe mode, and to submit event viewer logs.
This isn’t the first endless reboot problem Microsoft’s faced in relation to a service pack recently. In February, the company pulled a Windows Vista SP1 prerequisite update from automatic delivery because it was crippling some machines.
Related Posts
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...If you don’t like Internet Explorer 7 you’re gonna hate XP Service Pack 3
First, the problem was compatibility with retail point of sale systems.
Now that Microsoft has released released Service Pack 3 for the soon-to-be-phased out Windows XP operating system, users have found another problem.
Greg Keizer of Computerworld US filed this report
Microsoft has warned users updating to Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) that they won’t be able to downgrade from Internet Explorer 7 to the older IE6 without uninstalling the service pack.
The warning first appeared in a post Monday to a company blog written by the Internet Explorer (IE) development team. Microsoft released Windows XP SP3 to Windows Update as an optional download Tuesday.
“If you choose to install XP SP3, Internet Explorer 7 will remain on your system after the install is complete,” said Jane Maliouta, an IE program manager , in the blog entry. “Your preferences will be retained. However, you will no longer be able to uninstall IE7. If you go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, the Remove option will be grayed out.”
The inability to downgrade to IE6 after installing XP SP3 was by design, said Maliouta, because the service pack includes newer versions of the old browser’s files. If Microsoft had allowed users to revert back to the pre-SP3 version of IE6 — the one saved on users’ PCs when they upgraded to IE7, and until now what was used to back out of the newer browser — Windows would have ended up in a “mixed file state,” Maliouta said.
“This state is not supported and is very bug prone. To ensure a reliable user experience, we prevent this broken state by disabling the ability to uninstall Internet Explorer 7,” she said.
Users who want to retain the ability to downgrade from IE7 to IE6 should uninstall the former before upgrading to XP SP3. Once Windows XP has been updated to SP3, users can then install IE7. That process allows for reverting to IE6 in the future.
“The restriction on uninstalling only applies to when you install a Windows Service Pack release on top of a standalone IE release,” Maliouta said.
If Windows XP SP3 has already been installed, the only way to return to IE6 is to first uninstalled the service pack. At that point, IE6 can be restored on a PC that’s been updated to IE7.
Microsoft released IE7 in October 2006; it was the first major update to Internet Explorer since August 2001, when IE6 went final.
The newer browser has not been able to usurp IE6, particularly in businesses, where it remains Microsoft’s most popular browser. According to a survey released in late March by Forrester Research , only 30% of corporate Internet Explorer users had switched to IE7 by the end of 2007. IE6 accounted for nearly all the remaining 70%.
Maliouta also outlined how Windows XP SP3 upgrades affect in-place copies of IE6 and IE7; in both cases, she said, the currently installed browser remains undisturbed by the update.
However, users who have installed IE8 Beta 1 — a preview of its newest browser that hit the streets two months ago — will not be offered Windows XP SP3, according to Maliouta, again because of possible instability problems.
“We strongly recommend uninstalling IE8 Beta 1 prior to upgrading to Windows XP SP3 to eliminate any deployment issues,” she said, “and install IE8 Beta 1 after XP SP3 is on your machine.”
Related Posts
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...SP3 rollout snarled by Windows XP change
Gregg Keizer of Computerworld U.S. filed this report:
Microsoft confirmed Wednesday that it delayed the rollout of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) because changes to the operating system can corrupt data in the company’s retail point-of-sale and store management software.
The company has also suspended automatic distribution of Vista SP1 as well as XP SP3. “Yes, we are temporarily holding any additional automatic distribution of Windows Vista SP1″ said a spokeswoman.
Tuesday, Microsoft postponed the expected release of XP SP3 because of what it called a “compatibility issue” between the OS and Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS), point-of-sale and store management software designed for small and midsize retailers. When it announced the service pack’s delay, however, Microsoft did not spell out the specifics of the bug.
In fact, a Microsoft representative had outlined the problem in a post to the RMS support forum five days earlier, on April 24. “The Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS) Development team has identified problems when Windows Vista SP1 is installed,” said Tom Berger, who identified himself as a Microsoft online support engineer. “Windows Vista SP1 may cause data loss and corruption in Microsoft Dynamics RMS databases.”
According to Berger, Windows Vista SP1 changed the way Microsoft SQL Server handles some database records, specifically those that include information from multiple tables. “All users who have applied Windows Vista SP1 will be affected,” he added.
A Microsoft spokeswoman on Wednesday acknowledged that the same problems affected RMS users running XP SP3.
The company is also working on filters to block machines running RMS from being offered either Vista SP1 or XP SP3; it will resume automatic delivery of Vista SP1 and add XP SP3 to Windows Update once those filters are in place.
In the meantime, Windows Vista users can upgrade to SP1 by manually selecting it from Windows Update — it hasn’t been removed, only suspended from automatic download and installation — or downloading a standalone installer from the Microsoft site.
Although Windows XP users have no similar official alternative, some have uncovered a standalone installer for SP3 buried on Microsoft’s servers, and have been posting links on the TechNet support forum. Although the installer — available in several languages, including English, German and French — was vetted by numerous users who said it was identical to the finished version released earlier to TechNet and MSDN subscribers, Microsoft would not confirm that the links led to sanctioned files.
“In this particular case, it’s possible that some third-party websites are linking to the Windows XP SP3 software that we have published for MSDN and TechNet subscribers,” a spokeswoman said in an e-mail. “Since we cannot confirm the source of every link that third-parties provide, our recommendation is that customers wait until we’ve published Windows XP SP3 to Windows Update and the Download Center.”
Microsoft’s record with Windows service packs has not been impressive. Vista SP1, for example, was held from most users for six weeks because of balky device drivers, and the company initially blocked paying subscribers of its TechNet and Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) from downloading either Vista SP1 or XP SP3.
Microsoft has not divulged a timetable for resuming Vista SP1 on Windows Update, or offering XP SP3 for the first time. It also has not set a schedule for delivering a fix for the RMS bug.
Related Posts
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(2 votes, average: 8 out of 10) Loading ...How Microsoft’s products are born and how they die: Part 3
The final article of a three-part series by David DeJean of Computerworld
In the first two instalments of this series, we told you about the history of Microsoft Corp.’s product lifecycle guidelines, how they support service packs, and how Microsoft handled Windows XP much differently.
Despite hint’s from CEO Steve Ballmer the company could extend support, we’re in for an interesting few weeks between now and June 30, when the company is scheduled to stop selling XP through its retail and OEM channels.
XP won’t suddenly disappear on June 30. It will take some time for PCs loaded with XP to move from factories to warehouses to sellers to buyers. Shrink-wrapped FPP versions of the various editions of XP will also remain on sale until supplies are exhausted. And even after June 30, there will still be two ways to obtain XP until January 31, 2009.
The easiest way will be to buy a new PC with XP installed from a “white box” system builder. It will, of course, be an OEM version of the operating system (white box builders tend to use the same OEM versions as the larger vendors), which is tied to the PC it’s installed on and can’t be transferred to another computer.
Or you can buy a new PC with an OEM version of Vista Business or Vista Ultimate installed and downgrade to XP.
There are enough pain points in this process that you won’t want to undertake it lightly. While you may have the right to downgrade, the maker of your PC isn’t obliged to supply an XP install disk. If it’s important to you, check before you buy. And while you can reinstall Vista later on, you have to do it from the installation files or media you got with the machine, so don’t wipe those out by accident.
You won’t be able to activate your new XP install with its previously used product key across the Internet, either. A query to Microsoft on this last point produced the following clarification:
Does that make everything clearer?
Support goes on
Although the sales lifecycle starts to wind down on June 30, you can keep on using XP for as long as you want to. You might want to run XP until the next version of Windows, currently called “Windows 7,” comes out — it’s expected in 2010. Or you might want to give some other OS a little more time to mature — perhaps you think that Ubuntu Linux is just a couple of versions away from real usability.
In both these cases, time is on your side. There won’t be any changes in XP support until April 14, 2009, when Windows XP Service Pack 2 moves from “mainstream” support to “extended” support. Extended support’s security fixes should certainly keep you going safely until April 8, 2014, or until Windows 7 actually does ship, whichever comes first.
The problem is, there’s support and then there’s support. The last time Microsoft ended mainstream support for a version of Windows was in June 2005, when it stopped supporting Windows 2000. By the end of 2006, major software vendors had also ended their support for the OS. New products didn’t support Windows 2000, and upgrades of existing Win2K products to new versions weren’t available.
This lack of upgrades to run on defunct operating systems is a natural result of market forces. Application software makers, just like Microsoft, want to minimize their support costs by supporting their products on as few operating-system versions as economically possible, so when an OS version’s percentage of the installed base falls below its potential to contribute to the bottom line, the vendor will cut its support — and deflect complaints by pointing at Microsoft.
XP is certainly much more widely used than Win2K, and it will probably be supported by application vendors for a lot longer as a result. But if you really want to stay with XP, you should be prepared to stay with your current applications as well. There may not be any upgrades.
Finally, there is one more factor that might stretch out the life of XP a bit. Benjamin Gray, an analyst at Forrester Research, predicted last fall that Service Pack 3 for XP, which will ship later this year, may play a part. Big corporate customers are still looking forward to XP SP3, and Gray said he wouldn’t be surprised to see Microsoft extend mainstream support for this updated version of the OS past April 2009 in response to pressure from the enterprise market.
If you’re clinging to XP because you’re waiting for that stability and compatibility, whether in Vista or in the next version of Windows, or just because you’re entirely happy with XP and see no reason to change, then the product lifecycle guidelines are your friend. The combination of mainstream and extended support will give you several years of protection.
And even if you find in a couple of years that you can’t get an XP version of some upgraded application, extended support means that your XP machine still has some life expectancy — you won’t have to junk it just because it’s become a malware magnet.
But if you’re holding onto XP because you’re just purely mad at Microsoft, or your PC won’t run Vista anyway, then you’re only buying time. Sooner or later, it’s inevitable. Whether you love Vista or hate it, merely tolerate XP or won’t give it up until it’s pried from your cold, dead fingers, it will be gone. The product lifecycle guidelines say so.
Related Posts
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Windows XP SP3 suffers delay
From IDG News Service:
Microsoft has delayed the release of a third service pack for Windows XP, blaming a “compatibility issue” between the software and a retail-chain-management application.
Microsoft had said last week that it completed development on Windows XP, Service Pack 3 (SP3), and that it would be available via its software-update services on Tuesday. However, incompatibilities discovered in the past several days between an application called Microsoft Dynamics RMS and both Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 will force the company to hold off on releasing the software. Dynamics RMS is a retail-chain-management software for small and mid-sized businesses.
Microsoft said it is putting filtering in place to prevent its Windows Update service from offering both service packs to systems running Microsoft Dynamics RMS. Once that filtering is in place, Microsoft will release Windows XP SP3 to Windows Update and Download Center for users not running the application causing the problem. The company on Tuesday did not say how long putting in filters would take.
Microsoft is recommending that Microsoft Dynamics RMS customers not install Windows XP SP3 or Windows Vista SP1. For more information, those customers should contact Microsoft Customer Support Services, the company said.
A fix to the Dynamics RMS problem is being tested and “will be available as soon as that process is complete,” Microsoft said. The company did not provide a time frame for completion of the testing and recommends customers visit its TechNet Forums for more information regarding Windows XP SP3.
Related Posts
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(2 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...Dell may come to rescue of Windows XP customers
From InfoWorld:
InfoWorld has confirmed that Dell will sell and support Windows XP to consumers beyond the June 30 Microsoft sales cutoff date that Microsoft reaffirmed today, after earlier comments from CEO Steve Ballmer seemingly indicated it might reconsider that decision.
Dell will take advantage of a licensing option in Vista Business and Vista Ultimate that lets PC makers provide XP under the Vista license, which Microsoft calls a “downgrade” license. (Enterprises with site licenses have these same rights with any version of Vista.) In essence, the user is buying a Vista license that it can apply to XP, and Microsoft can still claim a Vista sale.
Dell will preinstall XP Professional as a “downgrade” on a variety of desktop PCs and laptops, a spokesperson said, saving users the hassle of doing it themselves. The computers available with the XP option will include the Windows Vista installation DVD in the box so users can later install Vista over XP under the same license if they wish.
The “downgrade” program is available as an option on some Dell Latitude, OptiPlex, and Dell Precision systems at no charge. It’s also available as an option on some Vostro and Dell XPS gaming systems for a small fee; these systems are targeted mainly at small business users and consumers.
A Dell spokesperson said this program will be supported as long as Microsoft supports the “downgrade” program.
Although Dell will ship a resource DVD that includes XP and Vista drivers for included peripherals, it’s unclear whether Dell will ship XP drivers for all the available options. For example, a Vostro 200 desktop today available with a choice of Windows XP and Windows Vista has an option for a wireless card that will not work under XP.
Related Posts
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Microsoft flack douses Ballmer’s suggestion of XP reprieve
Well, that certainly didn’t take long. An update from our friends at IDG News Service:
Comments by Steve Ballmer at a press conference in Europe on Thursday led to speculation that Microsoft is reconsidering its June 30 deadline to stop selling most new Windows XP licenses. A spokeswoman from Microsoft’s public relations firm said there is no change to the current plan, however.
“Our plan for Windows XP availability is unchanged. We’re confident that’s the right thing to do based on the feedback we’ve heard from our customers and partners,” the spokeswoman said, reading from a Microsoft statement.
Ballmer’s comments at a press conference at Louvain-la-Neuve University in Belgium led to a flurry of reports that Microsoft may be considering an extension of its deadline.
“If customer feedback varies we can always wake up smarter, but right now we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments,” Ballmer said, according to Reuters. Microsoft did not have a transcript of the event, but the spokeswoman from Waggener Edstrom said the report seemed accurate.
The spokeswoman said Microsoft is aware that some customers are pushing for an extension to the deadline — more than 160,000 people have signed a “Save XP” petition launched by Infoworld magazine, for example. But the company has also done its own research among partners and customers and feels that “the dates are right,” she said.
“We feel we’ve made the right accommodations for customers in certain segments who may need more time to transition to Windows Vista,” she said. “But as Steve noted, we maintain a constant stance of listening to our customers and our partners. That’s what is guiding our plan, and will continue to guide us going forward.”
The “accommodations” refer to several exceptions that Microsoft has made to the June 30 deadline. For example, companies that make volume purchases of Vista Business or Vista Ultimate can ask their vendor to “downgrade” their license to Windows XP. Microsoft has also made exceptions for the emerging class of small, ultra-low-cost PCs, and it will continue to provide Windows XP Starter Edition for PCs sold in emerging markets.
Retailers and PC vendors can also continue to sell any backlog of Windows XP licenses that they bought before the June 30 deadline. Beyond those exceptions, most new Windows licenses purchased after June 30 will be for Windows Vista.
The owner of a PC support center near Boston questioned which users Microsoft had been gathering feedback from.
“I’d love to know exactly what, and how many ‘customers’ Microsoft claims to be getting this feedback from,” David Bookbinder, owner of Total PC Support, said via e-mail. “My guess, and it’s an educated one, is that it’s more likely stockholder feedback.”
Total PC Support provides service to home and small-business users in eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.
“I service over 600 clients and have yet to find ONE speak highly of Vista, or wish XP to end,” he wrote. “And that goes from the biggest novice on up.”
Related Posts
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Ballmer offers hope for a Windows XP reprieve
This just in from our counterparts at Computerworld U.S.:
Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer said there is a chance the company could reconsider its decision to begin retiring Windows XP on June 30, according to news reports from Belgium.
Both the Associated Press and Reuters said Ballmer hinted that Windows XP’s availability could be extended if customers lobby to keep the six-year-old operating system. So far, Ballmer said, they have not.
“XP will hit an end-of-life. We have announced one. If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments,” Reuters quoted Ballmer as saying.
Previously, Microsoft has set June 30 as the end of XP for computer manufacturers, and the date when it would pull the OS from its retail list. Small shops and individuals pegged as “system builders,” however, will be able to pre-install XP on assembled machines for another year.
Yesterday, while answering a number of questions related to Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), which was released Monday, a company spokeswoman said that there had been no change in the June 30 date. Microsoft did not immediately respond today to a follow-up request for comment.
“In the business environment, we still have customers who are buying PCs with XP,” Ballmer acknowledged today.
In fact, according to Forrester Research, use of Windows XP in business barely budged last year, even though Windows Vista debuted in January.
Surveys of more than 50,000 corporate computer users, said Forrester, showed that 89.5% of all Windows users were running XP at the beginning of 2007, and 89.8% were using it at year’s end. Vista’s share, meanwhile, reached 6.3% by the end of 2007, a gain that was almost exactly mirrored by a drop in Windows 2000 use.
Today was the second time in as many weeks that Ballmer hinted at a possible reprieve for XP.
Last week, during a talk at Microsoft’s annual MVP — Most Valuable Professional — conference, he said: “We have a lot of customers that are choosing to stay with Windows XP, and as long as those are both important options, we will be sensitive, and we will listen, and we will hear that.”
Like today, however, Ballmer stopped far short last week last week of actually changing XP’s drop-dead date for OEMs and retail. “I know we’re going to continue to get feedback from people on how long XP should be available,” he said then. “We’ve got some opinions on that. We’ve expressed our views.”
Ballmer was in Belgium Thursday to help launch a new Microsoft facility in Mons, a city about 40 miles south of Brussels.
Related Posts
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(2 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...How Microsoft’s products are born and how they die: Part 2
The second of a three-part series by David DeJean of Computerworld
Last week, we told you about the history of Microsoft Corp.’s product lifecycle guidelines, which
apply to all Microsoft products, not just operating systems.
During the 1990s, the software vendor found it wasn’t able to bring out products fast enough to satisfy customers. Then the Internet bubble burst and PC sales slowed, and Microsoft brought in product lifecycle guidelines to reduce support liabilities.
First laid out in 2001 and revised in 2002 and 2004, the guidelines defined a three-phase lifespan and created a division between business desktop software and consumer desktop software. (In the beginning it was easier to distinguish between business products based on the NT kernel — like Windows NT and Windows 2000 — and consumer products that ran on top of DOS, like Windows 98 and ME.)
The first phase is the mainstream phase. In the prime of a product’s life, Microsoft provides both free and paid live support, support for warranty claims, and online self-help support information. Software support and maintenance is extensive and free, with downloadable fixes and updates, service packs, and freely available support for problem incidents as well as requests for design changes and new features. Business customers may pay for additional support.
In the second, extended phase, free live support and warranty support end. Free maintenance of consumer products is limited to security fixes. Self-help support information remains available online. Pay-per-incident live support remains available. Software patches and updates continue for business desktop software.
In the third phase, the end of the product’s life, online support information is removed. Patches and updates cease. The product is history.
These phases were set in a schedule with definite dates and durations. Business products would be supported for 10 years — mainstream support for five years, extended support for another five. Consumer products would get five years of mainstream support, but no extended support.
But there are two other factors in a product’s lifecycle — service packs and the availability of a new version of the product.
Service packs have a lifecycle of their own. Support for each service pack ends 24 months after the next service pack release (support for Windows XP Home SP1 support, for example, ended in 2006, two years after the release of SP2 in 2004) or at the end of the product’s support lifecycle, whichever comes first.
When it looked like mainstream support for Windows XP might run out before the next version of Windows made it to market, Microsoft amended the support lifecycle policy to promise that mainstream support would last for either five years or for two years after a successor version is released, whichever period is longer.
While the product lifecycle guidelines set very definite limits on product life spans, Microsoft has shown a willingness to move the goalposts when it gets enough pressure. When Windows XP shipped in December of 2001, it was slated to be in mainstream support until December of 2006. Microsoft’s internal problems with getting Vista out the door finally forced the company to extend the mainstream period for XP out to April of 2009, and to make some other accommodations, like eliminating the distinction between business and consumer versions, so that XP Home will have an extended support phase just like XP Pro.
The result is that next year, on April 14, 2009, Microsoft will end mainstream support for XP, and five years later, on April 8, 2014, it will stop supporting XP at all.
The other lifecycle
But even before that, XP faces a major event in an entirely different lifecycle, one that Microsoft has said very little about: the sales lifecycle.
The key dates for sales come much sooner than 2009 or 2014. In fact, in only a few weeks, on June 30, 2008, Microsoft will stop selling XP through its retail and original equipment manufacturer channels.
System builders, the “white box” retailers who build PCs to order, will be given another seven months, but on January 31, 2009, a couple of months before XP exits mainstream support, Microsoft will stop selling XP altogether (except for a version sold in some less-developed countries and a special arrangement for XP Home in China).
At least that’s the current information. It could change. It has before.
In the past, the company has generally kept the previous version of Windows on the market for two years or so past the introduction of a new version. That was apparently the plan for XP. When Vista finally shipped to enterprise customers in late 2006, the on-sale dates for XP were reset to January 2009.
But the new OS didn’t capture the popular imagination quite the way Microsoft had planned. Vista’s heavy demands for hardware, its rocky support for applications and peripherals, and its draconian security features have left consumers less than enthusiastic.
Enterprise customers have also been slower to move to Vista than to previous versions of Windows. A Microsoft reseller, CDW, reported this January the results of a poll that found that a year after its release, fewer than half of businesses were using or evaluating Vista.
Big OEMs initially switched from XP to Vista when the consumer versions of the OS shipped in January 2007. But by April, Dell, Lenovo, and HP were once again selling machines with XP installed. An April 4 post on Dell’s Web site announced the company’s intention to sell XP on certain systems “until later this summer.” Nearly a year later, the company is still selling XP systems.
In September 2007, Microsoft agreed to a six-month extension of XP’s on-sale dates, along with license provisions for Vista’s business editions that grant buyers the right to downgrade to XP.
All this leaves Microsoft in an unfamiliar position. Its major customers — the OEMs, system builders and enterprise licensees — and a vocal part of the Windows user base all appear to be reluctant users of Vista. None of this means that Microsoft is likely to grant XP another stay of execution. But it does mean we’re going to be in for an interesting few weeks leading up to June 30.
What happens after June 30?
Find out when ComputerWorld Canada publishes the final and third part of the series.
Related Posts
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...How Microsoft’s products are born and how they die: Part 1
In the first of a three-part series, David DeJean of Computerworld explains Microsoft Corp.’s product life cycle and how this affects Windows XP.
The approaching death of Windows XP may upset you, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Microsoft ’s product lifecycle guidelines have foretold the fate of XP since 2001. In fact, Microsoft has been killing off one version of a product as it is replaced with another for years now. But this time around, the approaching demise of XP is getting more attention than, say, the final passing of Windows 2000 .
Why? For a couple of reasons: XP is the most widely used operating system on the planet, and its long-delayed successor, Windows Vista , is not proving to be universally popular. The companies that make up the enterprise market for Windows are dragging their feet about upgrading, and on the consumer side there are signs of a rebellion against Vista.
Microsoft has already made changes in its timetables: Last year, the company extended the sales lifecycle — the time during which PC manufacturers and system builders could sell computers with XP installed — to June 30, 2008. It will stop selling XP altogether on January 31, 2009.
Microsoft will stop selling XP long before it stops supporting it. You may be able to run XP for as long as you want , but before too long you may not be able to buy a legitimate copy of XP to run.
Microsoft’s product lifecycle guidelines grew out of two sets of needs: Microsoft’s need to make a profit, and its customers’ (particularly enterprise customers) needs for some certainty about the products they were committing to.
The policy was an attempt at transparency, a promise that new products would be supported for a definite period and that as they aged Microsoft wouldn’t just abandon them. Instead, the company would withdraw support in a series of scheduled steps that corresponded to the pace of technological change, allowing customers time to transition to newer products.
The problem is that what sounds like a promise to some (particularly enterprise customers) can sound like a threat to others — particularly consumers. And they’re not taking it well.
This incipient consumer rebellion is a relatively new phenomenon, even in the short history of personal computers. For most of the ’90s, Microsoft couldn’t bring out new products fast enough to satisfy customers. Computing technology was exploding, and Windows exploded along with it, from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 to Windows 98 to Windows 98 Second Edition to Windows Millennium Edition. PC sales boomed and Windows users raced to upgrade to the latest version.
But that binge left Microsoft with a huge hangover. As the new decade started, it was supporting a tangle of versions and upgrades. Then the Internet bubble burst and PC sales slowed. New products like Windows ME weren’t as well received as the older ones. Microsoft needed to reduce its support liabilities and create a profit plan. The product lifecycle guidelines were the solution.
Check this blog Tuesday April 22 to find out more about the three phases in the life span of Microsoft’s products.
Related Posts
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
