Windows Vista SP1 breaks some third-party apps

By Diann Daniel, CIO
February 25, 2008 10:04 AM ET

. What's this?

This week Microsoft gave Windows Vista haters more to fuel their dislike.

Tuesday Microsoft pulled KB937287, an update meant to prepare Vista PCs for Service Pack 1, after a flood of complaints to newsgroups that the update made PCs constantly reboot or that they wouldn't reboot at all.

Then Microsoft published a list of 12 third-party applications deemed "unreliable" following a Windows Vista SP1 update.

What's troubling many is that some are security apps, including some virus protection programs. Affected security apps include Jiangmin KV Antivirus 2008, BitDefender 10, and Zone Alarm Security Suite 7.1. Microsoft blocked these applications from starting following an SP1 update, although supported versions are now available.

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Also affected are Iron Speed Designer 5.0, Xheo Licensing 3.1 and Free Allegiance 2.1, which do not run after Vista SP1 is installed. In addition, New York Times Read 3.0, Rising Personal Firewall 3.1 and Novell ZCM Agent 2.1 experience a loss of functionality following an SP1 update. Microsoft is recommending that users visit the software vendor website for a solution or program update.

Judging from the negative reaction on both Microsoft's blog and technology Web site, SP1 issues this week have undeniably added to the mounds of general bad press surrounding Vista. But is such reaction justified?

Michael Silver, speaking on Microsoft's move to publicize the problem with other applications says via e-mail, "This is a good thing. In every new OS release or service pack from any vendor, there are likely to be problems with some applications breaking. The vendor has two choices: say nothing and let people stumble on the problems as they try to deploy the software, or tell people what some of the issues are to reduce their testing time and accelerate them finding solutions. Microsoft is doing the latter and helping organizations understand the prerequisites for deploying SP1."

As for the negative reaction, Silver says simply, "At this point it's a feeding frenzy." He, for one, doesn't think such a reaction is warranted, since issues surrounding new operating systems are par for the course. "Vista has had many issues since its release, but it's not much different than the Win2000 shipment or even XP."