A previously announced critical update for the Windows operating system won’t be available on Tuesday.
Microsoft has pulled the September update from the release schedule, the company announced on its web site. Apparently, the next Windows update, which Microsoft had given its highest rating of critical, isn’t quite ready to be released:
Late in the testing process, Microsoft encountered a quality issue that necessitated the update to go through additional testing and development before it is released. Microsoft is committed to only releasing high quality updates that fix the issue(s) in question, and therefore we feel it is in the best interest of our customers to not release this update until it undergoes further testing.
Only rarely does Microsoft make this type of change. The company instituted the monthly updates as a way to help administrators manage the process of patching and rebooting Windows machines.
Since many companies run the Windows operating system throughout an enterprise, they prefer to schedule updates that will take machines offline for periods when the fewest number of users will be affected.
Microsoft has promised improvements to this process when the long-awaited Vista (formerly Longhorn) operating system arrives next year. A technology they have dubbed Freeze Dry will maintain application and document state through a reboot, which will help get a system running faster after an update or other problems that might cause the system to hang or crash.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
