Microsoft Offers To Support Vista SP1 Installations For Free

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Microsoft Offers To Support Vista SP1 Installations For Free

engine

2:29 pm on Mar 25, 2008 (gmt 0)

Vista users encountering problems when they upgrade to Service Pack 1 can breathe easier: the company is giving away free support for those installing the service pack.
Normally, only Windows Vista users who bought the retail product would be eligible for free support but, for SP1 installation, even users with an original-equipment-manufacturer copy of Vista on their computer can get Microsoft's help, according to the official Vista blog.
"We are offering free-of-charge support to anyone who is having issues installing Windows Vista SP1," Microsoft blogger Brandon Le Blanc said.

Microsoft Offers To Support Vista SP1 Installations For Free [news.com]

Rugles

6:19 pm on Mar 25, 2008 (gmt 0)

That is nice of them. But they wanted to charge me $75 to tell me why an XP update causes 12 minute boots on 3 of my machines ... and how to possibly fix it.

BillyS

9:09 pm on Mar 25, 2008 (gmt 0)

I'm breathing alright. The upgrade for me was pretty uneventful.

janethuggard

9:14 pm on Mar 25, 2008 (gmt 0)

Forget about it.

I bought four new machines with vista factory installed. Brands were HP for desktops and Toshiba for notebooks. All the machines are now HP.

All four had various and sundry problems from crashing, to blue screen, to dumping files like crazy, to not running properly with any other hardware we had, even newly purchased hardware designed for vista out of the box.

We would reinstall the printer/copier/fax/scanners one day, the next day the files would dump and we would have to reinstall again, every time, not just sometimes before we used the printer. These same printers never had a problem on the xp machines, and still work lovely on them.

I have all machines on a wireless printer/copier/scanner/fax now and reinstalling on every machine every day was a pain in the neck. So, I had to begin installing other printers on other machines. That is a pain in the neck for the laptops and we had printers all over the place.

All four new Vista machines had 4+ gig RAM and 160+ gig hard drives with 3+ghz processors.

All four went back within two weeks of purchase, and I then went on the hunt for XP machines to replace them. It wasn't easy, but at last I have seven machines all with XP. My life is perfect.

EVEN those XP machines had problems every single time I got my 3am winxp update. So, I have taken automatic updates off. I will run these machines (without updates) until somebody can prove to me there is a microsoft product that exceeds the perfection I have now, WITHOUT glitches. Using win since 3.0, I have never seen such a rotten piece of software as Vista.

I work hard, 18 hours a day, and NEED to unwind a bit at the end of the day before I go to sleep. I NEED my internet spades.

My biggest complaint on the Vista and XP after recent update machines, was I could not play internet spades on the MSN Zone Game site. All the vista worked fine on MSN Zone, until the first Vista update, then, immediately, I couldn't get back in.

2:30am spades working fine. XP update 3am, spades doesn't work, I'm booted out of game and can't get back in. Recovery back to 2:30am, spades works fine. I'm playing again. It is pretty clear.

How pathetic is it, when a Microsoft product has glitches that keeps users from accessing features on a MSN site?

You could NOT pay me enough to run a Vista machine. Time is money and working on 7 machines constantly so I can run my websites is NOT an option.

Lord Majestic

9:23 pm on Mar 25, 2008 (gmt 0)

You could NOT pay me enough to run a Vista machine.

I agree. And I did not even use Vista myself. Odd? No - the chatter on Vista has been so bad that anyone who just needs stuff running (which XP does pretty well) won't dare waste time gambling that Vista will bring something useful.

swa66

9:58 pm on Mar 25, 2008 (gmt 0)

Isn't that what any customer in *any* other industry would simply demand ? Just imagine e.g. Ford telling you "oh, your new car doesn't work properly ? It just stops once you get on the highway ? Pay us more and we'll tell you what's wrong with the car we sold you ...

The main cost of Vista to the world at large doesn't come from how bad the user experience or how bad the MSFT support is.

The core of the problem for the rest of the world is the secrecy in the DRM. That demand for secrecy is enforced upon makers of hardware, and it makes it *impossible* for such hardware to be supported by real open source (binary vendor blobs are possible -perhaps-).

So for me "designed for windows vista" is a warning label and I refuse to buy it at all.

Search for "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection" by
Peter Gutmann of the New Zealand Auckland univerity if you want to read much more.

The entire DRM issue basically means MSFT feels your computer is their set-top box. Buying vista (even if just included in the price of hardware) is voting with your money that you support that model.

fakedsysadmin

10:07 pm on Mar 25, 2008 (gmt 0)

I hate Windows Vista! I hate Windows is getting so good all the time!

Yes, I miss the days of Windows 3.x. Everyone needed me!

Now, everytime someone makes a new installation of Windows Vista, I get one step closer to lose my job.

I only hope those cheap OEMs keep selling machines without the required hardware to run Windows Vista. Then people will still need me to fix their installations.

But just when I was feeling secure again about my job, Microsoft decides to give free support for Vista SP1. Damn!

jpman

12:34 am on Mar 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

FakesysAdmin, Trust me you would never lose your job if you know what you are doing. I didnt lose my job. I just killed it and moved on with my life. Would never regret the good ol days of sys admininig. Those were good times. Enjoy your sys admin job, if you still got it.

fakedsysadmin

12:41 am on Mar 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

janethuggard, I know how you feel.

Like you, I didn't listen to my buddies in the 1990s. Yeah, back then Microsloth began preaching about Zero Administration.

My buddies made a good decision to switch to Linux. They knew hard times were coming as the Redmond guys wanted to start cutting system administration costs.

But I didn't listen to them. Back then, Zero Administration was a joke and I knew my services were going to still be needed for some time...

Gosh, time sure has really passed and Windows Vista with the right hardware runs and connects by itself.

Everytime I go to the pub my buddies laugh at me and make bets as to when I'll be without a job.

jpman, I'm glad you did listen. Cheers.

g1smd

1:02 am on Mar 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

The amount of non-Microsoft software that I run under Vista has continued to decline for months. I am beginning to suspect it is another round of deliberate "screw your competitors" thinking.

Every few weeks, something needs to update and then is quite unusable. In most cases, complete uninstall of the new, and reinstall of the old application fails to get it working again.

BillyS

2:44 am on Mar 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

Wow, what a diversity of opinion. I've got Vista on a laptop (Dell for my kids) and during the same week I upgraded my computer (one I built for myself last year) from Windows 2000 to XP.

While XP does seem faster (although it's not fair to compare my desktop to a laptop), Vista has yet to break or depart to the BSOD. I finally got a BSOD with XP earlier this week - in fact I had to re-install the entire OS because a critical service broke during a virus scan that hung the machine.

The Vista laptop went from the box to being connected to my network in less than 20 minutes (most of which was getting my 26 character WPA code to the new machine).

bill

4:24 am on Mar 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

We're getting off topic here folks. Let's try to keep the tangents for other threads.

This thread isn't about whether you like Vista or XP.

I've installed SP1 on a couple of machines. It's a long install, but I haven't run into any issues at all. However, I may not fit into the profile of your average user.

The interesting part is that MS is opening up its help system to support SP1 install issues. By covering even OEM installs this prevents people from flooding the PC retailers for support. I'd rather get OS support questions answered by Microsoft than some outsourced technician from Dell/HP/etc.

sgietz

1:27 pm on Mar 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

Windows is by no means perfect. Vista is buggy, which is mostly a software compatibility issue (I reverted back to XP for that reason), but it's by no means as buggy as many people make it out to be. It's a simple matter of someone not knowing what they're doing, or a bad piece of software/hardware is causing all the drama.

Learn to use and maintain your PC and then you can jump down MS's throat!

bateman_ap

1:41 pm on Mar 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

I must say I have had no problems installing the update. Have now done all 5 of my home machines, 1 ultimate, 3 business and 1 home premium. What I would say though is that when I originally installed Vista on them they were all clean installs, I didn't bother to try to upgrade from XP and the software on them all is pretty standard, Office 2007 on them all and Creative Studio on a couple.

ecmedia

2:07 pm on Mar 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

Agree with BillyS. Like bateman_ap I too bought a Vista machine and simply let the Windows update feature do it for me in a heartbeat.

ByronM

2:20 pm on Mar 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

Happily running vista here. i've installed sp1 on hundreds of managed machines and not a single problem. All clean installs of Home Premium, Ultimate and mostly Business Edition.

[edited by: ByronM at 2:22 pm (utc) on Mar. 26, 2008]

bill

12:14 am on Mar 27, 2008 (gmt 0)

simply let the Windows update feature do it for me in a heartbeat.

The SP1 update took about an hour on each machine for me. It's good to attempt your install when you won't need the machine.

Has anyone run into issues when installing SP1?

BillyS

12:44 am on Mar 27, 2008 (gmt 0)

>>The SP1 update took about an hour on each machine for me. Has anyone run into issues when installing SP1?

Okay, I'll bite on this one too.

I'm not sure how long the update took. If I had to guess, I would say it was around an hour. I've got a very high speed connection so downloading the update was not the determining factor.

What I did notice was that after the update was "installed" the machine wanted to reboot three times to complete the installation.

As others have said, I believe that machines that come with Vista installed will breeze through this update.

bill

1:00 am on Mar 27, 2008 (gmt 0)

The hour long install I mentioned didn't include download time. I downloaded SP1 from the MSDN network back in February. I was just referring to the install time.

What I did notice was that after the update was "installed" the machine wanted to reboot three times to complete the installation.

If I recall the setup dialogs tell you about the multiple restarts during the install. That's nothing to be concerned about.

I believe that machines that come with Vista installed will breeze through this update.

I wonder what the breakdown is? I've had no upgrade problems with SP1, but all machines had a clean install of Vista to begin with. None of them were upgraded from XP.