No service packs will ship for Windows 2000 before it leaves Mainstream support in Mar. 2005, Microsoft has announced. Instead, the company will ship a final "update rollup," a selective package of patches that has been tested to a similar level as a service pack. The decision could simplify updating Windows 2000 for both Microsoft and its customers but also means that customers will be running a more diverse set of Windows 2000 configurations, which could complicate product support.

Diminished Role for Service Packs

The planned update rollup represents a shift in the Windows group's policy for supporting recent product versions like Windows 2000. In particular, the decision reduces the role of service packs.

Microsoft generally issues consolidated and integration-tested fixes for recent Windows versions in the form of periodic "service packs." Service packs normally include a cumulative set of all fixes, security updates, critical updates, and other updates since a product was released. Service packs also frequently include new product features.

For security and reliability reasons, customers must frequently deploy individual patches between service packs, typically by obtaining the patches on an ongoing basis from Microsoft's Web-based Windows Update site. However, service packs have some advantages over individual patches:

Testing. Service packs receive more rigorous testing than individual patches, including integration testing to catch incompatibilities among patches.

Baseline for support. Service packs serve as a standard baseline configuration for Microsoft to support, reducing the number of different product configurations that its support technicians have to be able to diagnose and fix. The company generally offers product support for a system only if it is running a recent service pack.

Baseline for OEMs. With Windows, service packs also provide a standard configuration for OEMs to ship to customers and support.

However, because service packs often include customer-requested design changes or features, customers traditionally have had to test them with the same rigor as new product versions before deploying.

Also, because service packs are cumulative and include all fixes, they include some fixes that don't apply to a specific customer or system. As a product matures, fewer bugs are reported, and those bugs typically impact a smaller set of users. Installing relatively obscure fixes on a system that does not need them could destabilize the system.

Note that service packs are not guaranteed to ship for any product versions, even those that are in the Mainstream support phase of the product life cycle, which typically runs five years after the version first ships. In the Mainstream phase, Microsoft only commits to provide customers with the following:

• Free and paid support
• Security updates for vulnerabilities
• The ability to request fixes for bugs.

What's in the Update Rollup?

The Windows 2000 Update Rollup will be a set of fixes packaged together for easy deployment and tested by Microsoft like a service pack. However, the update rollup will not be a complete set of fixes since Windows 2000 shipped. Rather, it will be a carefully selected set of fixes that shipped after Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 (SP4), the service pack that shipped in June 2003. The primary selection criterion used to determine which fixes to include is the number of users affected by the problem addressed by a fix.

Microsoft says the update rollup will not change features. The net result is that customers should have to perform less testing on an update rollup than they would on a service pack before they deploy it on their systems. In the future, Microsoft might decide to release update rollups for mature products such as Windows 2000, especially late in the life cycle of the product, because a service pack with more fixes that address obscure issues creates a greater risk of application compatibility problems.

OEMs have in the past used update rollups to set a baseline for new systems they deliver to customers, and they can do so with the Windows 2000 Update Rollup.

What’s Happened Since SP4?

Microsoft has posted Knowledge Base or security bulletins for 47 fixes it has made to Windows 2000 since SP4. Approximately seven of these fixes are related to security vulnerabilities, and six involve problems which could cause Windows to fail with a stop code or blue screen. Other fixes involve running certain components, such as Terminal Services, or other unique conditions that are not likely to affect all users of the product.

It is not clear which of these fixes will be part of the Windows 2000 Update Rollup, other than those for which Microsoft has issued a security bulletin. Those not included in the update rollup can still be downloaded from the Windows Update or other download sites as needed. This means building new Windows 2000 servers will be more complex, because customers must install SP4, then the rollup, and then download any additional patches they may need. Microsoft and customers could have a harder time supporting systems, since the baseline will be older and existing systems will have many different combinations of applied patches.

Resources

Useful information about Windows 2000 service packs, such as lists of what was fixed in each service pack and a link to the list of fixes made since Windows 2000 SP4, is available in a Knowledge Base article at support.microsoft.com/kb/260910.

Background on Microsoft’s software life cycles and support is available in "Maintaining Software Through the Life Cycle" on page 22 of the Aug. 2004 Update.

Definitions of Microsoft’s software delivery terms such as "hotfix" and "service pack" are defined in the Knowledge Base article support.microsoft.com/?kbid=824684.

Microsoft’s announcement of the Windows 2000 Update Rollup is at www.microsoft.com/windows2000/server/evaluation/news/bulletins/rollup.asp.

Frequently asked questions about the update rollup are answered at www.microsoft.com/windows2000/server/evaluation/news/bulletins/rollupfaq.asp.