Windows update roadblock [Solved - Yay!]

[thebs]

I did not know that they actually keep the images up to date with updates, and not just serve day 1 .iso file.

Not any more. That stopped with NT 6+ (Vista and later). Only 1 Update. If they stopped that, most OEMs would revolt, as would their Enterprise customers. Heck, they still get that request, repeatedly, from Enterprise customers to release >>1 Update over 5+ years. Most of us MCPs agree, it's stupid not to.

All NT 5.x (2000, XP, 2003) versions had 3+ Updates. That made it easier to clean install XP on even a circa 2010 PC. Microsoft understood that and purposely stopped doing it for that reason. Even worse, they changed the "slipstreaming" of updates with NT6.0/6.1 (Vista, 7, 2008), and changed it yet again with NT 6.2+ (8+/2012), which is a real PITA when the tools and procedures change.

I.e., for those of us who know how to pre-update the install directory, it's gotten progressively more difficult with each version. This is purposeful, sadly enough, to force enterprises to be on the latest version.

I mean, the whole reason for Updates is to "roll up" all fixes into a well integration tested update. With NT/Windows, it's 10x more beneficial because Microsoft has all sorts of "inter-dependency issues." That's beyond just the installation issues.

E.g., SQL Slammer hit in early 2003 just one (1) week after a full Update. The full, rolled-up Windows Server 2000 update fixed an issue that was known from last fall, where two (2) newer Windows Updates broke a MS SQL fix that would have prevented SQL Slammer. Microsoft let it break the fix, purposely (they admitted it in the Notes of the 2 patches), because Microsoft hadn't figured out how to make them co-exist, and figured a general Windows patch for all systems was better than the one that fixed MS SQL, which had less systems.

I.e., I was at a Fortune 20 company on the call where Microsoft blamed its own MCPs for "failing to install updates." A week later, a Network World article had the guts to call Microsoft out on that, and disclosed the two (2) updates for Windows that uninstalled the fix, and said if you didn't immediately install the latest, full Update in just the handful of days earlier that week since release (again, less than a week, which was a major downtime schedule), you were at the mercy of Microsoft's own screw-up that they had let sit.

In other words, by "staying current" with patches, you were vulnerable. And it's hypocritical for Microsoft to stop releasing Updates, for this very reason -- it was the only thing that actually fixed the "integration issue" between 3 patches.

Microsoft had the article yanked from the on-line version, but I had the print edition. Saved my colleagues' butts with management.

► Show Spoiler

Microsoft is not the only vendor that did this prior, and others still do today.

E.g., Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 came out in early 2007, based on Fedora 6 in 2006, and Update 11 for RHEL5 was released in 2014. This made it installable on not just most PC Servers today, and even the Workstation edition for PC Workstations. My current client still has RHEL5 for a lot of advanced Image Generation with nVidia cards, and we haven't ported the software forward to RHEL7 yet.

One of my large customers before that had 80% of Workstations running Linux, and we were much smaller than the Windows team supporting it, despite all the GUI and mission critical desktop applications on Linux, whereas theirs was just MS Office and Exchange (little else). They cloned to avoid issues, we didn't ... we installed clean every time, and plopped down all updates as part of the built-in installation and configuration management. Deterministic installs, each and every time ... something I've never been able to do with, especially not with lots of 3rd party apps, on Windows.

We could keep installing a 7+ year-old OS on new hardware because we had those updates.

If you're lucky, with Windows, you get to put in that Storage Driver disk to support the new storage, and hopefully load the needed drivers for everything else. Unfortunately, lack of updated platform drivers still cause "Blue Screens of Death" post-install, or even during 2nd or 3rd boot during install.

[thebs]

what if i told you that after installing from a mounted image the only update listed is for windows 10? i guess that's the advantage of downloading the iso directly from microsoft, its the latest version and has all the updates

Well, yeah!

I mean, Windows 10 is the latest version, and will be the last version of Windows. So I'm sure they are going to keep "rolling updates," at least until the Next-Gen OS comes out. Their strategy is still in-flux on the latter.

Microsoft is chucking the GDI, core MS IE libraries and other things, which are 100% required subsystems for 100% of Windows software built since 1994 and 1997, respectively. The base "recovery" modes, including CHKDSK, are extremely limited in functionality, and none-too-different (even age-wise) to their pre-GDI codebase in OS/2 (which Microsoft has legal IP and copyright access too, even post-1995, long story).

E.g., their first attempt is Windows 10 Server "Nano," which finally removs the Graphic Display Interface (GDI) that all Windows apps are rooted on, even "Core" versions of Windows Server that still must have a GDI just to display a console.

I.e., Windows 10 Server "Nano" breaks 100% of all existing Windows apps, even most server apps, and have to be built differently, which is leading into the Next Gen platform, post-Windows.

Windows, and all applications, are also "unclean" for things other than 32-bit, byte-aligned x86. If you run into the components of MS Office 64-bit that haven't been ported over, now you understand why. It's also why MS Office OpenXML (4 different "transitional" versions) != the ISO Office OpenXML 2008 standard, which has already raised the ire of the UK (among other) governments, especially with the 2007 and 2010 incompatibilities in their "transitional" XML versions.

Microsoft has officially dropped ARM and other platforms as well from Windows, and it's not a surprise why the XBox One is a PC too (8 core, 2 GPU, AMD Jaguar). It finally "dawned" on them once they had to put an x86 byte code emulator/translator (slowly translates code into native object code over several runs) in their non-x86[-64] run-times for .NET. It was just unsustainable ... and slow.

That's why they are getting away from Windows for the future.

Not right away. In fact, Microsoft is becoming a non-exclusive apple. They are moving to become Intel's #1 PC vendor themselves, which is actually a good thing. A lot of issues are going to be removed from typical PC OEMs, who are often just getting the same, reference system from the Big 3 Chinese/Tawainese ODMs (ECS, FIC, Foxconn) anyway.

But Windows 10 is the last version ... ever. We'll see if that changes if Microsoft has success as a PC vendor, but for now, that's the strategy.

► Show Spoiler

We'll see where this leads, but they have clearly indicated that as they create a new, portable codebase. Being that .NET is based on Java (yes, legally licensed too, right down to the CLR having the same inheritance limitations as the JNI -- that's not conspiracy theory, but fact, including Sun winning their lawsuit to keep them from calling it "Java(R)", hence when .NET and C# started), it's already very POSIX (UNIX/Linux)-like.

Most of .NET's current issues with portability is because of the use of Win32-x86 only libraries that cannot be ported. Microsoft is heavily engaging Google, Canonical (Ubuntu), Attachmate (Novell-SuSE) and Red Hat to help with .NET's future for this reason, trying to get away from the Win32-x86 only run-times.

That's also why we're finally seeing Microsoft openly admit to what BSD and Linux they are running internally, including their cloud division going Linux entirely for their Software Defined Network (SDN) stack. Most high-end game development has been on Linux since x86-64 hit in 2005, even Nintendo and Sony devkits were Linux before that, then customized Linux run-times for the consoles followed. Most people never see Linux because it doesn't have to be "branded."

Even billion dollar Linux companies like Red Hat refuse to pay for branding the countless systems that run RHEL and Fedora. Marks Shuttleworth spends some on branding of Ubuntu, but even he's pulled back given the costs and what it detracts from. I.e., that money could be paying developer's salaries instead of subsidizing for-profit companies.

The run-times tend to be co-developed on Linux with Windows, while they aren't released for Linux because it becomes a support issue. Not so much that Linux is more difficult to support, but because it's a 2nd platform to support -- let alone 3rd when you already do Apple. This is the same issue you don't see Apple or PCs w/Linux in most corporations, unless their primary applications to their core business are on those platforms, in addition to, let alone especially instead of Windows (a lot of high-end workstation applications are not on Windows, but Linux, or have "Lite" versions for Windows).

But more and more we're seeing if they've done Apple, they also do Linux (and, subsequently, SteamOS), in any new developments.

Especially once Valve finally made their Linux client public. It was in-house for many years prior, but they feared not releasing it, just like Adobe and Intuit don't, even though Linux has been a $1B+ platform for Adobe since '02 (which is why they make their apps WINE run-time compatible, and support those companies). E.g., Microsoft withholds the "Gold Books" from competitors, which is why Corel died after they bought WordPerfect, and was forced to find another platform.

But once Microsoft started the "Games Live for Windows" and appstore, that chronically failed (and smarted anyone who "switch over," Valve knew it they had to do something. And the rest is history.