Early Vista SP1 64-bit installs causing new problems

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 25 February 2008 04:01

Opinion and Analysis

Our intrepid reader, who is a consummate IT professional and a very high profile person in the Australian IT scene, had installed Vista SP1 on his 64-bit version just a few days ago after Microsoft's mistaken early release, and all seemed to install properly, with the whole process taking an hour.

In a previous article entitled “Microsoft 64-bit Vista SP1 early release snafu” we noted that it was “Lucky for Microsoft there isn’t a stack of Vista 64-bit users screaming because of some new hardware or software incompatibility... or at least, not yet”.

So, when we received an email this morning from the same reader noting two new problems, we wondered if this would be widespread, and would appreciate if any other 64-bit SP1 users experiencing the same problem could let us know in the comments.

Here’s the email we received this morning, complete with screenshots: “Windows Mobile Device Center is now crippled for this participant in the Vista SP1 early roll out for x64 Ultimate users with dual processor laptops!  All I now get is this succinct but nevertheless unhelpful screen to ‘explain’ why I can’t sync my Treo any more”.
  


The second part of the email we received says the following: “The WMI service also appears to have a problem, as the system no longer knows what processor, memory or performance rating it has.  It was 4.5 before SP1 – but it’s a secret now!”



Our reader ends with: “Not happy Steve!”, something that is obviously directed at Steve Ballmer, and not Steve Jobs. Bill Gates must be happy he’s leaving!

No doubt Microsoft will issue yet another patch or update to fix these problems. Still, it a clear case of issuing patches to fix problems caused by a previous patch, which was issued to fix problems in the original build.

It almost sounds like the Russians using sticky tape and chewing gum to fix problems on the MIR Space Station while it floated up there in space, and we all know what eventually happened to that space station, burning up as it fell back to Earth.

So, are Macs and Linux machines ‘perfect’ all of a sudden? Please read onto page 3.