Vista SP1 auto updates also halted

Microsoft confirmed Tuesday that it has stopped automatic updates of Vista to Service Pack 1 in the wake of a newly discovered glitch.

The problem, which has also halted the availability of Windows XP Service Pack 3, prevents Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System from working with either operating system update.

"We are temporarily holding any additional automatic distribution of Windows Vista SP1," Microsoft said in response to an inquiry from CNET News.com. The company said it will continue to make Vista SP1 available for manual download. Microsoft had just started pushing out the Vista service pack last week via automatic updates.

"While we are recommending that customers running Microsoft Dynamics RMS should not install SP1, there are many other customers who can benefit from installing Windows Vista SP1 immediately, so we are maintaining availability via (Windows Update)," Microsoft said. "We are delaying the release of Windows XP SP3 and holding any additional automatic distribution of Windows Vista SP1 as a precaution and to help ensure that our customers have a great experience with Windows."

The company has not yet described the problem, beyond saying it is a "compatibility issue." I have also asked for data on how the problem was discovered, why it took until XP SP3 to find it, and how many users run Dynamics RMS.

[Leria]

How did they miss this problem?

Is it that not many people use this piece of Microsoft software? Or that they just forgot to test on systems with this installed?

[aka_tripleB]

My guess is...

Not too many people use DRMS. How many stores and resturants do you go in that has a biege box for their POS machine? I only know of one place, and it's not a chain and don't make great profits. I do know that that place still uses XP, and it's a relatively new machine. It was installed about 1.5-2 years ago, which explains why the place hasn't moved to Vista yet.

[mreiher]

Funny!

Months of testing and they forgot to test their own products? No
wonder people are looking for alternatives! No ones perfect... but
this is sloppy.

[sderf]

Vista phoofy

Why don't they just dump vista. It is a sorry excuse for and OS.

[Sir Geek]

That would require something they lack...

... the ability to admit they made a mistake.

They should have made Vista feature upgrades to Windows XP (that way you could chose or NOT chose to install them).

[Zaunto]

How did they miss it?

They were on the wrong track to begin with.

Instead of giving us a lean mean operating system and allowing us to download bloated features if anyone wanted them, they added pointless resource hogging eye candy that requires higher spec hardware than many systems that ran XP with no problems. The point of that was to get people to buy new computers. Having done that and discovering that many (or all) of your peripherals and software don't work with Vista, you'd have to replace hardware and software. Most of us have Vista systems that run fine and are not rushing out to buy Vista or systems running it. Microsoft missed the boat on this one. I still can't get Vista Service Pack 1 to install and haven't been able to determine why.

[Zaunto]

TYPO

Before the spelling and punctuation Nazi's hit me- TYPO- "Most of us have XP systems that run fine and aren't rushing out to buy Vista systems".

[daftkey]

Basically both..

RMS is a specialty piece of software that serves a very specific
market.

As with most enterprise software, the clients using RMS are
avoiding Vista like the plague (though XP SP3 also breaks RMS -
this, IMHO, is more serious).