Bug Pushes Vista Out to November 8th 285
IntelliAdmin writes "Microsoft originally targeted October 25th for Vista's release to manufacturing, but a last-minute bug that 'took most of the Vista team by surprise' has caused an unexpected delay, said Ethan Allen, a quality assurance lead at a Seattle high-tech company that tests its products for Vista. Allen said the Vista team discovered the bug, which 'would totally crash the system, requiring a complete reinstall'. Vista now has a new RTM date of November 8th" A reader wrote in to point out this story originated with Paul Thurrott.
No wonder (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No wonder (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No wonder (Score:5, Funny)
How can a guy named Ethan Allen possibly be comfortable knowing his boss has a history of throwing furniture around?
Oh noes (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh noes (Score:5, Funny)
Tom
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RTM will (hopefully) be released on 8.11.2006, while the version you can buy in a store will not be released until 30.01.2007
Vista Release (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft: Buy Vista Now!
World: Why should I?
Microsoft: Uh...because it's prettier and has DRM support?
World: No thanks, I'm happy with what I have now.
Microsoft: Please?
World: No.
Microsoft: Ballmer throws a chair in the new screensaver, and we dressed Gates up in a dress for the default background.
World: Really? Sign me up!
Microsoft: Really?
World: No.
(Months pass...)
Microsoft: WTS slightly used global software monopoly.
Google: 5 dollars and Gates in a diaper apologizing to the world.
Microsoft: Sold!
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Some of us found it funny. I found it hilarious.
That you do not find it funny or work for Microsoft and feel insulted does not mean it's a troll.
Reserve your troll and flamebait mods for racist bullshit posts. Spend mod points modding up a really insightful or at least well-written-even-if-wrong post elsewhere. Like the guideline says, focus on modding up, not down, nitwit.
At least they caught it before release (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, this sounds like a fairly major bug to catch this late in the game.
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Exactly makes you wonder how many other major bugs are slipping through...
Sounds like they have some pretty major flaws in the test plans for major bugs to be revealed this late in the game.
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I'm a programmer, and I know that I definitely (Firefox, I love your spell checker!) don't use the program the way our users would. If I want to get to a certain point in the program, I typically use the fastest route to get there, not always the most proba
Re:At least they caught it before release (Score:5, Insightful)
Before everyone gets their flame on remember how many times they got verbally hammered for not testing their software first and shipping later.
Though the bug was caught this late in the game it does appear to be, although minimally, that MS is trying to do the right thing for once. Perhaps losing market share has spurred better business practices.
Likely? No. Possible? Yes.
Re:At least they caught it before release (Score:5, Insightful)
They had a lot of bugs in the past that were incredibly annoying but didn't force you to reinstall. My point is that this doesn't prove that they would have stopped the presses for something not forcing you to reinstall but still critical.
2. The fact that they actually discovered one huge bug in time to fix it before release doesn't mean that there won't be major bugs discovered after release.
With their track record, their arrogance, and the way they have to force the IT industry to leave the OS business to it, they should be held to the highest standards. We shouldn't cut them any slack just because they happened to discover a critical bug just before release for once.
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Again I repeat:
Also it's important to note that MS losing precious holiday frenzied shopping time probably isn't in their best interest.
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Oh come ON! Do your socks come with a shiny little hologram? Does your underwear "protect" your music for you? Besides, with Vista you get a chance to call up Rajanand in India and wish him a Happy Christmas! Provided you make it past the first sentence of course.
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My underwear protects my music, as long as my MP3 player stays in my pocket. And I don't have to re-install my underwear after a crash...Oh wait...I do it every morning...ah well..never mind.
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I'm not sure how what I said is arrogant or what my supposed arrogance might have to do with the subject at hand.
One small issue (Score:2)
Though the bug was caught this late in the game it does appear to be, although minimally, that MS is trying to do the right thing for once.
One minor observation. MSFT cleared over 3 billion dollars LAST QUARTER! You'd think they could have taken a paltry 300 or 400 million of just that one quarter of profit and invested in the technical resources to get Vista out the door on time.
Ya think?
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But Microsoft isn't giving itself enough time to thoroughly test this because they're rushing out Vista by the end of the year. They just found a major system-corrupting bug after they've already pushed out an RC1 and RC2 and weeks away from RTM. That's a little alarming. The criticism in this case stems from the fact that they're not giving Vista enough time to s
Nothing less would have delayed it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Too bad.. (Score:2, Funny)
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Is QA this bad? (Score:2)
I knew MS has poor QA... but a bug that requires a complete reinstall????
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Why are you surprised at this?? Do you know how many other things seem to require a complete re-install?
Every time I hear someone who supposedly knows a lot about Windows tell me to reboot the machine all of the time, or say "dunno, maybe you should re-install", I just want to choke someone. But the first Microsoft patch (reboot) is frequently
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Re:Is QA this bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
The number of possible scenarios in something as complex as an OS is *staggering*, you just can't cover every last case with any reasonable amount of time and manpower. So, you design tests to cover sensitive areas and likely trouble spots, you take as large a sampling of other cases as possible, and you accept a certain amount of risk. Sometimes, someone gets lucky and stumbles across a showstopper two days before you release. Better to have found it in-house than to have a customer report it.
Re:Is QA this bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
The vast majority of the posts on this subject leads me to believe that the vast majority of slashodtters don't have the first clue about the development and testing of a large project.
Oh, and let's not forget that a few months ago an Ubunto update deleted the entire home directory of users. That's as major as this Vista bug, and was readily producible (unlike this Vista bug), yet it slipped through.
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Big Bug (Score:5, Funny)
Suicidal (Score:5, Funny)
Ethan Allen (Score:2)
Reportedly, Bill Gates is resting easy with the knowledge that Ethan Allen [wikipedia.org] and his Green Mountain Boys [wikipedia.org] are on the job.
Missing from the article (Score:4, Funny)
Another member of Ethan Allen's team added "Give me Vista, or give me death". When Microsoft asked on what authority they could make such demands, Allen replied "In the name of the great Jehovah, and the Continental Congress". Off the record, he also retorted "Come out, you son of an XP hack, or I'll smoke you out!"
(in case you don't get it) [wikiquote.org]
vms ... (Score:2)
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They needed to Enhance the Feature (Score:2, Funny)
So the ship date was pushed back to allow them to Enhance the Feature.
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I periodically rebuild my Windows machines, however, sometimes I get lazy and put it off.
Thanks to this new feature, however, Vista will automatically notify me when its time to rebuild!
printable - (Score:2, Informative)
Who didn't see this coming? (Score:2, Interesting)
1) Vista has suffered from massive flaws, bugs, etc. ever since it was still called Longhorn.
2) Most of the IT community believes there's no chance Vista will be released on time.
3) Microsoft swears on its collective mothers' graves that Vista will be released on time.
4) Weeks before the scheduled release, a "massive and totally unexpected" bug forces the release to be postponed.
Smart m
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Ethan Allen? (Score:2, Redundant)
Nov 8 of which year ? (Score:5, Funny)
Here we go again.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one say, let's judge the final product before we smack Microsoft for something that's not yet released to the public.
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Who else would bother to read a story like "News flash! QA team finds bug in prerelease software" ?
The summary makes it clear that no actual information is known except for a short schedule slip. Why would I even be looking at the comments except to read people bashing "M$"? (Scare quotes to aid the irony impaired.)
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Right. So it's a good thing when you put all your data - how about little things like patient records, lab results, etc, on your machine and 12 months later, when you're confident that you have a stable OS and don't back up every single day, this bug crashes in the middle of database accesses and mangles everything up for ya. Yeah, we love those surprise "ninja" b
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Disliking Microsoft for being a shit company that turns out half-assed software that only hurts innovation in the computer industry does not mean we have to bow down and worship at the altar of Linux (or OS X, or Solaris) development.
Why must dislike of choice A always be turned into an irrational support of choice B? This isn't even our two-party political system we're talking about, it's software!
Re:Here we go again.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, if you've even bothered to test the latest release, you'd notice that it works really well. How much time they've had to work on the operating system is irrelevant. Plus, they admitted it was a mistake to wait this long and also said future releases would occur more frequently. Still, how much time they've had on their hands and how you feel about that has nothing to do with the final product, because the only loser here is Microsoft who don't make as much money as they'd like to if their OS:es were released more frequently.
It doesn't matter that it's uncommon...
Right. You're saying that a bug that occurs once in a million is as serious as one that occurs once in a thousand? That's just nonsense.
they're advertising this OS as the cure to everything that ails us, the most secure, stable, perfect version of Windows ever.
Well, you're right. They do say that it's the most secure and stable version. And it probably is. I don't think they've ever said it's a cure to everything, nor that it is a perfect version of it, however. What's your point here, really?
BTW, this was SUPPOSED to be the final product. But there were flaws in it.
No, the final product is the one that's taped out and printed onto the disks. An open and free test version of Windows is hardly a beta. Why the hell are you so upset about a bug which was discovered PRIOR to the release?
When's the last time you heard of a bug in Linux forcing a reinstall?
I've never heard of one, but I've only installed official releases of Linux. And just because we haven't heard of one doesn't mean there is no such bug. And once again, I must remind you that this bug occurred prior to the release, so it's not really a big deal. After all, we're going to use the final release of Vista, right?
No Surprises (Score:4, Insightful)
What kind of $MULTIBILLION corporation, whose steady stream of "upgraded" products are essential to global business and billions of personal lives, runs this way?
Microsoft. When monopoly is all you need.
Recalibrate your flame detector (Score:2)
Before you start wearing your flame retardant suit all the time, you might want to see if anyone is playing with a flame thrower.
Consequently I think it would have been a horribly funny bug to release
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Moderation +2
100% Insightful
I care even less than I usually do about reply flames (ie, less than zero).
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I usually find that waiting a month after the service pack helps too, oh and SP2's should be given at least 2-3 months leeway.
Of course having the benefit of a full pre-deployment test rig helps, small business and consumers have to rely on other peoples propaganda FUD and try to make an educated guess...
The Solution! (Score:3, Funny)
I say just leave it in and call it a feature.
November 8?!? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:November 8?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Vista is... (Score:2)
Great news (Score:4, Funny)
What a fucking whiner! (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, Steve Bink at bink.nu is a great guy and a friend, and I know he had no idea that these guys were just ripping me off. But that's the point of this: If you separate a story enough from its true source, it's becomes kind of unclear what the truth is.
Welcome to my life.
Poor Paul Thurrott! Such a hard life you lead. "I wrote about this first, I wrote about this first! digitimes didn't credit me! IDG credited digitimes, not me! I wrote about this first! bink linked to the IDG story, what about me!"
Paul Thurrott may be an important figure in the coverage of Microsoft Product or something, but I hardly think he's the only person with "sources" who get tipped off when these things happen. Maybe, just maybe, digitimes has sources too, and they found out about the setback from some place other than Paul Thurrott's site(s). Paul needs to get over himself, he's not the sole source of Microsoft news.
That, my friends, is what you get if you rely too (Score:5, Interesting)
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There is such a thing as regression. The automation assures that bugs that were fixed in the codepath don't pop up again.
The effect of this is that you have bits and pieces of Vista that are tested really well and other bits and pieces that aren't tested _at all_.
I'm sure this is true for any sizeable software product, including MacOS X and Linux.
Re:That, my friends, is what you get if you rely t (Score:4, Insightful)
Automated tests are better.
Automated tests can be run at night, when no one's around. They can be run constantly, without driving someone insane.
Automated tests are reproducible. Try following someone's 'Uh, I clicked here, then opened this, then I think I cancelled that program, then...' instructions a few times. Then tell me automated tests aren't preferable.
Can't keep up with all the tests to run? Buy a new computer. Your scheme would have a new person hired every time someone's maxed out. (Or, alternately, dumping old tests.)
Automated tests cover regressions. Found a bug? Write a test for it. Then if it pops up again (which they always do), you catch it early.
Automated tests can be run by anyone, if done properly.
Automated tests are predictable. They do, in fact, cover the same code each time. This is an asset, not a liability. You know exactly what you've tested, and what you haven't. You can write _more tests_ to cover the other stuff. You'd rather someone happen to click a little different on the last build, and miss a regression?
Manual testing is required for GUIs to some extent, and to winkle out usability issues.
To suggest MS is dumb because they tried to make their testing rigorous, predictable and regular is utterly absurd.
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I think his point is that the almost SOLEY rely on automated tasting. If that is true, then they are making a mistake.
Re:That, my friends, is what you get if you rely t (Score:2)
Depends on how well it's designed: the smart way to write an automated test is to have it generate (and log!) as many corner cases as it can come up with.
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Where did you get the idea that MS is relying on automation and not doing manual poking around? This bug likely occurs in extremely rare circumstances, which is why it was not discovered until now, despite the years of manual and automated in-house testing and millions of beta testers.
Testing for Vista (Score:5, Funny)
Is it just me or does this sound like testing for a disease or something? "Bad news. We got your blood tests back. You have Vista."
PatchGuard hack (Score:4, Informative)
Have they fixed the photo import bug? (Score:2)
Or are they intent on making sure the first thing every Vista user does is grab a 3rd party tool for managing their photos instead of using Vista's built in tools?
I know Vista is offering a lot "under the hood" but beyond that every time I look at it I honestly think "They've had 5 years to development a new OS and this is all we get?". Vista may end up being a solid OS, and I'll definitely be using it at home, but I'm just
Vista Experience - HA HA (Score:3, Interesting)
My experience -- It sucks.
1. The thing doesn't have support for my SATA controller. Gigabyte board, Ali SATA controller. I had to use the XP drivers. Tell me that Gigabyte/Ali are no name brands that no one's heard of. Not a deal breaker, as there's a work around.
2. Install is extremely slow. My personal idea is that every step along the way, the install is trying to find an IDE hard drive for some reason, but since I don't have one, I'm having to wait for timeouts. I'm not sure if this is the case, though.
3. Once you get in... My Geforce 3 can't handle Aero, so MS helpfully turned it off. The default theme is ugly as snot, with huge window borders (4-5 pixels), baby blue in color. Trying to change this baby blue color yielded no results; it stayed baby blue.
4. Getting used to the explorer shell again (I use Geoshell on my windows boxes) is a pain. What they've done to Explorer makes it less user friendly, instead of more user friendly. Granted, I don't use Explorer very often either (I use Directory Opus on my windows boxes), but even XP's Explorer is better/more usable.
5. The thing that made me finally throw my hands up in frustration. Somewhere in the 6 hours I had it running, I managed to completely lock myself out of Control Panel. Every time I'd try to go in there to get to something, it would crash. Whether I did it off the Start button, whether I did it from Explorer, it didn't matter... Explorer would crash. Another co-worker had this happen on a VM install of Vista, but he got around it by using MMC and manually adding in the plugins of whatever he wanted.
For RC2, this is a sad state. I remember, back in the day, happily running NT4 Beta 2 for months and months. Oh well.
Never thought I'd say this... (Score:2)
Put the flame-thrower down, hear me out:
With all the Flap(TM) over Vista's licensing changes (*coff*ahem*'clarifications'*coff*) and
the "single reinstall/change...no! Wait! we meant up to 10! or maybe it goes up to 11, even!!11oneone",
I'm forced to wonder if this would be the best "acid test" for Vista's license.
If Vista allows for one "transfer/reinstall/leg-pulling-legalese-of-choice ", then where would that
have left people who got bit if it happened a second
rushing it is gonna burn them (Score:2)
1) The news of this delay came only 2 days before their supposed ship date.
2) They're STILL DEVELOPING THE SOFTWARE a week away from releasing it to the entire world!!
Maybe this is normal in smaller software development firms, but to me, it seems like they're being overly aggressive in getting the product out the door. This will likely become the most widely installed application on the face of the earth and yet they're still fixing (major) bugs a week before s
I don't buy it (Score:2)
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You haven't bought much software recently have you? It's almost standard in the gaming industry as marketing rushes the product out for Christmas. But that's ok, you can download the 700MB patch later, on a pay-for-subscription site. If you have an internet connection of course. It sounds like you're in denial my friend!
Any details? (Score:2)
What kind of problem could cause this serious destruction of the OS installation?
I'll guess it's registry corruption, since they rely on a single point of failure. Mess up one single entry, and the entire system is toast.
If it' file system corruption, that shows a serious lack of debugging effort. If the file system is this broken, how could you fail to notice it earlier?
CS 101 (Score:3, Informative)
Glad I just switched to mac, even though it took a CompUSA store closing in Roswell, GA to get me to fork the cash out. Even a 30% discount was painful. Since then I've had two crashes caused by alpha software, but nothing from release quality stuff.
V for Vista (Score:5, Funny)
The OS upgrade season and plot
I know of no reason
Why this Windows version should ever be bought
The Bug (Score:5, Funny)
Who woulda guessed?
Re:Re-install? (Score:4, Insightful)
A crash is one thing, but a re-install to fix it? I have my doubts, but if anyone can pull it off, it's Microsoft!
Not that hard to imagine, really. A filesystem driver bug that blows away critical tables in the filesystem could put you out of commission pretty quick. (I have no idea what the bug is but filesystem corruption is the most likely thing I can think of.)
Re:Re-install? (Score:4, Interesting)
It might not be as technically damaging as a filesystem bug, but with the DRM tied into everything if it fails the system will be left goosed.
I remember the cryptographic service failing on Windows XP causing problems, but this was fixable because it wasn't at the core of the system.
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"There's no telling how many OTHER bugs are still there, waiting to totally crash your system and force you to reinstall. We can make guesses (200? 500? 1000?) but nobody really knows."
There are BUGS? In SOFTWARE??
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Nothing Insightful Here (Score:2)
"There's one bug, so there could be more bugs." Oooo... let me jot down that one alongside the writings of Confucius.
People are modding on autopilot now. Casting Microsoft in a negative light? MUST be insightful!
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I know we're all supposed to hate Microsoft here, but come on. Put a little intelligence into your post next time.
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Next time, I'll put big tags around the post.
Microsoft announces they're postponing everything for two weeks because of ONE SINGLE BUG. Of course there are more bugs. Of course some of them are probably just as vicious. But MS is is focusing on one single one, as if to try to convince the market that they're really on top of these things. "Look, we found this big bug! Everything will be fine after we squash this one!" Very reassuring to some folks.
Alternatively, there is some other reason for the
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That should be, "put big <IRONY> tags"... *sigh*
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See, I like to bash Microsoft as much as the next guy, but I've always tried to be reasonable about, pointing out and recognizing faults in my OS of choice while doing so.
It used to be fun to poke fun at Vista, the delays, the features getting cut left and right, ribbons, all of that. Not only has it become tedius, but in my opinion it's just become a bit depressing to think how mediocre a product this mig
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You're right. They should take a page from the crack developing team at 3dRealms and only release it "when it's done."
That way they will only ship only quality products.
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Bug requiring reinstall? (Score:4, Insightful)
Every OS has bugs. But there are bugs, and there are BUGS.
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That's because Microsoft doesn't let you keep your bugs until you've paid for them. :P
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So, what did they do on October 13? Add a huge new feature? Or just fix a bug that was bad enough that they felt they had to fix it before they shipped, and make a mistake in the fixing process? My bet would be on the latter.
I mean, I hate Microsoft as mu