Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches

Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches
Brian Krebs, Washington Post 2004-08-23

Microsoft Corp.'s decision to release a major upgrade for its flagship operating system in the same month that hundreds of thousands of students are

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Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches 2004-08-23
Anonymous (1 replies)

SP2 has been available in Release Candidate form for about six months. Why aren't these schools' IT departments prepared for its effects? Why aren't these schools' IT departments using Software Update Services (SUS) - a free Microsoft tool - to manage deployment of SP2 (and eliminate the bandwidth c...

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Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches 2004-08-25
Anonymous

Not that I'm defending the schools, but I think often their IT "manpower" comes from students... who were gone for the summer....

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Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches 2004-08-23
Anonymous

Interesting given the fact SP2 has been available for several months in BETA and RC form for testing purposes. Sounds like some of these schools waited until the last minute to consider this and simply started pointing fingers. Why should Microsoft delay the release to satisfy education institutions...

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Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches 2004-08-23
Anonymous

yep Microsoft's timing couldn't have been worse, I mean it is not like they gave people months and months of Release Candidates to test compatibility... oh wait they did. ...

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Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches 2004-08-24
Anonymous (1 replies)

If the schools and universities were run like a well managed corporation they would have plenty of staff and resources to test and deploy SP2 to university PCs without a problem.

The problem is not Microsoft's. The problem is that the universities are under staffed and are complaining instead of...

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Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches 2004-08-25
Anonymous

I especially liked that one quote from the guy who actually thought that the "anti-patch" needed to be "deleted" in order to install SP2. All the anti-patch does it prevent the patch from being installed automatically. It can certainly be bypassed manually. If that guy's the VP of IT at a higher edu...

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Why wait 'til the last minute to start testing? 2004-08-24
Anonymous

Why didn't the schools test the various Beta and Release Candidate versions of Windows XP Service Pack 2? Ummm ... perhaps because Microsoft is notorious for slipping in last-minute changes which bung everything up? So you might just as well wait until the final product is out the door before you ...

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Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches 2004-08-24
Anonymous

If they would have tested with the SP2 RC over the past couple of months in a lab and then deployed a few of the SUS Servers on their Intranet they could use policies on their LAN's infrastructure to police the traffic so its not a bottleneck.

With networks that large they are bound to have laye...

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Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches 2004-08-24
Anonymous

I agree, maybe the patch isn't the problem.

Some systems are already secure and don't have to be upgraded at all. ...

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Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches 2004-08-25
Anonymous (1 replies)

Microsoft's RC's are unfit for testing, considering the amount of changes that occur from version to version of RC and to the final release.

We will continue to block the SP2 update, eventually unblocking in sporadic buildings around campus, to maintain badnwidth issues.

anon net admin, anon u...

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Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches 2004-08-30
Anonymous

i tested several RC's and interim builds and they most definitely WERE suitable for testing on 10% of my test community. In fact we found issues that we reported and were fixed.

Sounds like you are trying to make an excuse for your admins and your university lack of capability or professionalism...

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Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches 2004-08-25
Anonymous

The questions at hand are:

1) Why arent they using SuS?

Im sure they are on the SCHOOL's Computers, but this article is mentioning Student's computers. To use SUS it has to be setup for each computer normally through active directory GPO's. No college I ever went to would put peoples personal ...

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Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches 2004-08-25
Anonymous

This service pack has been out in beta and RC form for months now. If they can't get their act together and plan ahead for this deployment, they've got problems.

There's no excuse for this. Simple as that. Even with the ever-decreasing IT resources they should've had some plan in place....

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squid would help 2004-08-25
lipa

a transparent http proxy (like squid) helps with the sp2 update, windows update etc.

i wonder why the unnamed "university admins" can't implement such a simple, cheap and (usually) easy to integrate solution....

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Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches 2004-08-26
Anonymous

Gee, it's nice to be anonymous so a person can throw around insults without first expressing an understanding of the University environment.

I guess the words "Academic Freedom" and under-staffed, coupled with the repercussions of Academic software and teaching environments, public library acce...

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