Bugs and Fixes: A Big Microsoft Mess--Patches Gone Bad

Last winter, Devin Wood of Milford, Massachusetts, installed Service Pack 1 for Windows XP. Right after that, his PC got slower, and he's been unhappy with it ever since. "I'm sick of watching my desktop icons draw like someone is inside my computer with an Etch-A-Sketch," says Wood.

We received many similar reports from readers after SP1 rolled out (go to "Proceed With Caution When Using Microsoft Patch"). Several months later, Microsoft said that it had released patches to fix the performance snags. But now we get the bad news: Microsoft admits that it didn't address readers' problems, and the company says it has no plans to fix the situation at all.

Here's how the saga unfolded: When Microsoft first released the supposed fix, it told us that the only way to get help was to call Microsoft (see June's Bugs & Fixes at "Leaky Windows--Keep the Hackers Out"). Hordes of unhappy XP users picked up the phone. Some readers said company technicians told them there was no fix for XP performance woes. "The tech denied the problem [existed]," recalls Devin Wood. But other readers spoke to techs who were aware of the problem, and they received e-mail messages with a link to a fix. It turns out that some of these readers were directed to one patch, and others to a different (unrelated) patch. Neither fix took care of the problem. (If you installed either one of these two patches, your PC won't be affected, according to Microsoft.)

Double Trouble

The first patch, a "hot fix" labeled Q815411 (details at "Heap Algorithm Update for Atypically Large Heap Requests") was aimed at a small set of corporate customers. Hot fixes are quickie patches that Microsoft creates when users run into specific problems.

"The patch was mislabeled," says Greg Sullivan, lead product manager with Microsoft's Windows group. "This enterprise hot fix was created for PCs running under very specific circumstances."

The second patch, labeled Q811493, was a revised security fix affecting Windows XP, 2000, and NT. Microsoft had to withdraw the original security fix because it introduced performance lags for some SP1 users. Visit "Buffer Overrun in Windows Kernel Message" and click Technical Details for Microsoft's notes about the reissued patch.

After this crazy runaround, we continue to receive readers' reports about sluggish PCs relating to SP1. Nevertheless, Microsoft doesn't believe that the problem deserves a patch.

"[We've] not received broad general feedback about performance issues with SP1," Microsoft's Sullivan tells us. "Therefore, [we're] not currently developing a widely applicable patch."

Some readers have uninstalled SP1 to get performance back. Visit "Microsoft Windows Service Pack 1 Readme" for Microsoft's notes on how to remove SP1. Sullivan doesn't advise users to do this, but it seems to be your only (extreme) option. Sullivan also says that, in general, you don't need SP1 to get future updates, although some updates (known as quick-fix engineering updates) do require SP1.

Microsoft's site doesn't offer an easy way to submit a complaint. Send your SP1 reports to bugs@pcworld.com.