New Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack Debuts
OVER A YEAR in the making, Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 has finally been released. And like most Microsoft Service Packs, this one fixes a lot of problems, as well as create a few of its own. It also clears up some rumors about incompatibilities with future versions of NT.
First the good news. The service pack contains a lot of bug fixes. The list, which Microsoft has posted at
support.microsoft.com,
numbers in the hundreds. It includes all of the hot-fixes released
since Service Pack 3, including a number of Year 2000 fixes.
The bad news is that there is, at this point, a small handful of hardware incompatibilities that you should watch out for when you install. Some of the notable ones include:
If you have a Number Nine Visual Technologies Imagine 2 video card, you may lose the ability to set video to over 256 colors. What is most troubling, even if you move back to SP3, you can't return to the higher color resolution.
If your computer has SystemSoft Card Wizard 3.x, you may lost socket services. You need to reinstall the Card Wizard 3.x after installing the Service Pack.
If you have a Dell Latitude portable with Softex Advanced Power Management 1.0, power management and PC card controller services will stop. You need to upgrade to version 2.19 or higher.
There are incompatibilities with the ATIRage drivers.
If you have a Silicon Graphics workstation and you want to install SP4, you must get additional files from the Silicon Graphics web site at support.sgi.com.
There may be incompatibilities with Microsoft IntelliPoint productivity Tips. You may need the latest version of the IntelliPoint software from microsoft.com.
Before loading the service pack on your system, give the Release Notes a careful reading for other issues that may impact your computer.
Finally, here's the rumor. If you are one of the brave souls who are trying out Windows NT 5.0 beta 2, you have found out that it introduces version 5 of the Windows NT File System (NTFS). It upgrades your NTFS partitions, and if you move back to NT 4.0, you will get error messages saying those partitions are damaged and unusable. There was an extended discussion on the BugNet forum at Infoword Electric that this new file system would also be introduced with Service Pack 4. If true, it would mean that you if you need to step back from SP4 to SP3, you would have to "kiss that partition goodbye."
However, this is not the case. According to Microsoft, "SP4 includes a new ntfs.sys that allows NT4 systems to use these volumes. You will not have access to advanced NT5 features, but the drives will work exactly like they did before. SP4 does NOT update ntfs volumes, only NT5 does this."
This means that you will be able to go from SP4 back to SP3, if need be.
-- Bruce Kratofil
bugnet.com
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