Troubles Surround Windows Server 2003 SP1

KingFish

The first reports from users installing Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 are in. And as was the case with its client counterpart—Windows XP Service Pack 2—the latest Windows Server service pack breaks several key Microsoft and third-party applications.

SP1 (Service Pack 1) is primarily a security update. But as was the case with XP SP2 (Service Pack 2), Windows Server 2003 SP1 also will include some brand-new features. SP1 is the foundation for Microsoft's forthcoming 64-bit Windows Server 2003 releases. Microsoft released Windows Server 2003 SP1 to manufacturing at the end of March.

Last August, when Microsoft released XP SP2, more than 50 key third-party applications, custom applications and even a number of Microsoft's own products broke when users attempted to run them on top of the XP update.

As a result of app-compatibility problems, a number of enterprise customers postponed installing SP2. To date, according to Microsoft and third-party estimates alike, about one-quarter of XP enterprise users have upgraded to SP2.

When SP1 went gold, Microsoft Windows Server officials said they expected 80 percent of "major server applications" to work out of the box. Of the remaining 20 percent that encountered problems, Microsoft execs expected most problems to be alleviated with small system-administrator-applied configuration tweaks, such as turning off the Windows Firewall.

Yikes! Not good. The last place you need an app to break is on your server. -KF

Source: eWeek

Shorty

Rolled it out to our Windows 2003 server test network, no problems. Slowly rolling it out to the live network, again, no real problems

Test, test test is the answer!

tcith

Same here - Yest and Dev all stable

Have had in on production environment since early last week with no issues

that's 27 Windows 2003 servers

KingFish

Cool! I was waiting on confirmation before I rolled it out.

primesuspect

Successful rollouts here too... On a smaller scale than these pros though

1 production server running web edition and 1 AD domain controller - perfectly fine.

KingFish

Here's a more in-depth article of the problems surrounding Windows Server 2003 SP1:
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1787985,00.asp

Apparently MS Exchange 2003 is one of those broken apps.

Microsoft Watch wrote:

The problem list included:


Computer Associates' Brightstor ARCserve Backup 11.0;
Hewlett Packard's Compaq Insight Manager and HP Insight Manager 4.0 products;
Microsoft Application Center 2000 Service Pack 2;
Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 1.2.1;
Microsoft ISA (Internet Security and Acceleration) Server 2000 Service Pack 1;
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003;
Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003;
NetIQ's AppManager 5.01 and 6.0 and Group Policy Administrator 2.0 products; and
Trend Micro's ServerProtect.
Since the list was posted, some vendors (including Microsoft) have posted patches and updates that resolve some of the SP1 incompatibilities for specific products. Others have not.

also:

Microsoft Watch wrote:

Dell Computer is set to begin preloading Windows Server 2003 SP1 on its PowerEdge servers as of June 2005, according to the Dell SP1 support page (PDF file). But some bleeding-edge users who have already installed SP1 on their Dell systems have run into problems.

"Please be advised that Microsoft has a problem with SP1 for Windows 2003 server and Dell PowerEdge servers that are configured as domain controllers. Installing SP will (likely) blue-screen your server with a corrupted registry. The source of the problem is still unknown but is suspected to be related to an incompatibility with the Dell OpenManage software," noted one Dell SP1 customer posting in an online newsgroup.

Just FYI.

Shorty

tcith wrote:

Same here - Yest and Dev all stable

Have had in on production environment since early last week with no issues

that's 27 Windows 2003 servers

27

Im rolling it out to 247 :bawling:

beregid

hell, it killed one of our domain controllers. had to run repair with the instillaition cd to fix it. i have a tech friend that has done 5 successful installs of the sp1, and he suggested i install it. i called him at 5 a.m. to let him know it killed my domain controller. lol. i have not installed it on any of the other 8 servers we have running server 2003. i do find it funny that microsoft's sp1 for server 2003 kills exchange 2003 clusters. the best part is that there are 3 applications made by microsoft on the list of known incompatibilities list. what kind of idiot deploys a service pack that kills your own software.