The legal team over at Microsoft has sent a website that claims to be hosting a number of patches intended for release with Vista service pack 1 a cease and desist order.  The owner of Hotfix.net has removed the download links for the patches but there is still plenty of information available on them. He claims to have gotten most of his information from Microsoft’s own Knowledge Base.

There are even updates as part of Windows XP SP3 though Microsoft won’t admit it but you can check your update list, some of them will be listed as being part of SP3 for XP.

No updates as part of Vista SP1 have been released and there is no release date for Vista SP1 as a whole though it is believed it will be out before the end of the year. Microsoft did not want the SP1 updates distributed because most of them have not completed testing and according to them “It is important for Microsoft to work directly with customers to ensure they are downloading a hot fix that may be designed to resolve a specific technical issue, rather than having them download haphazardly from other websites.”

Since when has Microsoft worked closely with customers? I guess they are just referring to their review process when they begin testing updates. Then how did they miss the recent ANI flaw for over two years, even they don’t have the answer to that.

Microsoft is advising users not to install any patches that claim to be part of Vista SP1 from any site except from their own update system. It is sound advice but the kicker is that SP1 doesn’t even have security fixes in it; SP1 is all about improving functionality. I guess Vista just needed a few more months before it was ready.

I don’t think they could have afforded to delay Vista any later. They could have and we might have gotten a better operating system but impatience from everyone, pressure from Microsoft management and just a general feeling that Vista should have been ready on schedule got us a somewhat rushed operating system.

It’s not bad but it could have been better, SP1 is hopefully the fix we are all looking for.

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Related:

Microsoft disavows knowledge of Vista Service Pack 1

Legal action threatens Vista, iTunes and iPod production and sales

Windows Vista immune to remote code execution flaw in Microsoft Jet Database

Vista SP1 compounds existing compatibility issues

Microsoft releases last prerequisite Vista updates in preparation of SP1 release

Entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 3:53 am under Security, Upgrading, Vista.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.