According to a post at PCWorld that along with Service Pack 3 for XP being pulled for recently discovered incompatibilities with Microsoft’s own Dynamics Retail Management Software they are also pulling Service Pack 1 for Vista from the automatic update cycle. Apparently Microsoft has discovered that changes in Vista SP1 affects how SQL Server behaves in certain circumstances to the point of possible data loss or corruption.

While the company has been fairly forthright in announcing the problems caused to their own software with either of the Service Packs Neil McAllister; the author of the post on PCWorld, notes that nothing is being said about potential problems for other installed software. He goes on to point out that both XP and Vista users; especially those running SQL Server, might be wise to hold off installing the service packs

Curiously, there’s been no word as to how many other applications might be affected by these incompatibilities. Maybe it’s just bad luck that Microsoft’s own software can corrupt data when the OS updates are applied, and no one but Dynamics RMS customers need worry. If you ask me, though, I would tread very carefully before applying Vista SP1 or XP SP3 to any server running an application with a SQL Server backend. Until we get more information about exactly what causes the data corruption, we have to assume that this same gotcha might be lurking out there for other business applications, as well.

I’m sure the Mac and Penguin fanbois will have fun over this one for which I would suggest that they wait for the day; if it ever comes, where their favorite OS has to update on a worldwide multi-language and sometimes critical mission computers. I think they will find that such a Herculean task isn’t as simple as 1 - 2 - 3.

Conversation Tags: Windows, Vista, XP, service packs