Microsoft tends to enterprise Windows users — but kicks consumers to the curb

In the past two days we’ve seen reports about Microsoft reducing the price of XP support for its largest customers and been told that after eight days of no-shows Windows 8.1 Update is going back out to WSUS corporate update servers. It also turns out the folks in Redmond have extended the Windows 8.1 patch support cutoff date to August, but only for large corporate customers.

This is all great news — on the corporate side. Consumers and small organizations, on the other hand, are still faced with the end of XP support — no matter what the cost — as well as persistent, unexplained errors installing Windows 8.1 Update and a hard Windows 8.1 patch cutoff date that’s a little over three weeks away.

In the XP game, it pays to be big. Computerworld’s Gregg Keizer collected candid statements from several large Microsoft customers, saying that Microsoft had pulled back on its reported $200-per-PC-per-year charge for Windows XP support. Keizer says that Microsoft has reduced the price of XP Custom Support Agreements — the price that large customers pay for XP support, over and above their usual Volume License and Software Assurance fees — to put a cap on prices for organizations with more than a thousand XP PCs:

The new ceiling is $250,000, according to several sources, although the $200-per-device price remained in place.

ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley repeated the claim, confirming through independent sources that the prices have come down, although she has different anecdotal evidence, citing one XP installation that lowered an $85 million agreement to just $3 million “to cover all of the devices in his organization still running Windows XP.” More than that, Foley received a sorta confirmation from a Microsoft spokesperson:

We’ve been working with customers and partners on the migration from Windows XP since we announced in September 2007 that support for Windows XP would end on April 8, 2014. As part of this effort, we’ve made custom support more affordable so large enterprise organizations could have temporary support in place while they migrate to a more modern and secure operating system.

Of course, for those of you running XP or working for an organization with fewer than 1,000 (or so) active XP PCs, the news doesn’t mean much. Microsoft still hasn’t made any rumblings about offering the same XP patches to the unwashed masses — at any price. I haven’t heard about any plans to set up Robin XP Hood patch centers, redistributing the patches Microsoft sells to those with very deep pockets, but it could happen.

On the Windows 8.1 Update side, the situation’s even more bifurcated. As I reported yesterday, Microsoft’s now sending Windows 8.1 Update (the patch most of us identify as KB 2919355) through the normal WSUS update server channels. Enterprises using WSUS to control Windows updates are encouraged to deploy Windows 8.1 Update. Prior to the re-release of the patch over WSUS, companies were told that they would no longer receive patches for Windows 8.1 after May 13: Installing Windows 8.1 Update was a prerequisite to receiving any patches for Windows 8.1.

Perhaps as penance for yanking the patch for eight days to fix distribution bugs, Microsoft yesterday offered an extension on the Windows 8.1 end-of-patching-support date. According to Brandon LeBlanc’s post yesterday:

All customers managing updates using WSUS, Windows Intune, or System Center Configuration Manager have until August 12th to apply the new updates. For those that decide to defer installation, separate security updates will be published during the 120-day window.

In other words, if you get your Windows patches through a corporate WSUS server (or Windows Intune or System Center Configuration Manager), Microsoft will continue to give you patches for Windows 8.1 until Aug. 12. That’s very good news.

If you don’t get your patches through WSUS, though, you’re basically outta luck. If you want Windows 8.1 patches to keep coming after May 13, you have to install Windows 8.1 Update/KB 2919355 — if you can. Yes, those Win 8.1 patches are the same ones rolling out of WSUS, but you don’t get them … unless somebody at Microsoft changes their mind and cuts us non-WSUS Windows customers a break.

Progress on the Windows 8.1 Update installer patching front is completely stalled and frustrating as ever. There are two main conversations on the Microsoft Answers forum, with a total of almost 1,000 posts. The first conversation, started by Michael Cherry on April 4, covers Windows 8.1 Update installation fails on Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center. The second, started by BrandonStead on April 8, covers a wide range of installation failures, particularly terminating with errors 0x80070020, 80073712 and 800F081F. Although posters on both threads describe hours and hours of frustrating work trying to get the patch to install — sometimes with high-level Microsoft support — there are no definitive answers and Microsoft has not yet issued a fix for the patch.

And these folks who can’t get Windows 8.1 Update installed are facing that May 13 deadline, with no reprieve in sight (yet) from Microsoft.

There are two home-grown fixes for the Windows 8.1 Update installer problems that seem to work in a majority of cases. The first, a complex eight-step process from Marek Kusmierski, fixes some — but not all — of the myriad errors. The second, from Microsoft Forum Moderator Vivian Samartha, takes six steps. It’s marked as an “Answer” to Michael Cherry’s problem with Win 8.1 Pro Media Center, but several posters have said it doesn’t work for them.

There’s been some further confusion: Folks who installed Windows 8.1 Update using the files from MSDN have to take another step to make their Windows 8.1 Update a “real” Windows 8.1 Update. Windows Update/Microsoft Update will offer you a further update, also called KB 2919355, which fixes the fact that the MSDN files and the KB 2919355 files aren’t the same. MVP and Answers Forum moderator Susan Bradley explained it to me this way:

Normally the bits you get on MSDN/VLSC and via Windows Update/Microsoft Update are the same. This time they are not. The MSDN files include five separate patches (KB2919442, KB2919355, KB2932046, KB2937592, KB2938439, KB2949621). The final patch wouldn’t install on Servers. Come to find out via a comment in a forum that final patch was a Bitlocker one that would only install if you had the Bitlocker role installed. When the Windows Update bits released, it had a final part/KB that is different than the one on MSDN/VLSC.

The MSDN and VLSC updated ISOs do not contain the complete set of fixes that are offered from Windows Update. Therefore, Windows Update and WSUS will offer the KB2919355 update again to computers that are deployed by using the images in these ISOs. This is expected and does not result in the full reinstallation of the Windows 8.1 Update but only one smaller component of it. The rest of the update will not be downloaded or reinstalled.

Confused? I am.

Bottom line: If Windows Update or Microsoft Update offer you the KB 2919355 update, even if you have Windows 8.1 Update installed, you should take it. On my Windows 8.1 Update-from-MSDN production machine, the patch was offered as a 129MB download and it installed without incident. I’ve also heard — but can’t independently confirm — that yet another KB 2919355 patch will be offered at some point in the future.

I haven’t any idea if Microsoft will block patches to Windows 8.1 come May 13 on machines that have the patch-deficient MSDN or VLSC copy of Windows 8.1 Update installed.

There’s even more confusion: At least one site is reporting that Microsoft changed the MSDN ISO images of Windows 8.1 Update on April 15. While I can’t vouch for all of the Win8.1 variations on MSDN, I can confirm that the report is wrong for the file that contains the full U.S. English Windows 8.1 with Update, X64. Filename is en_windows_8.1_with_update_x64_dvd_4065090.iso. Also, the file currently on MSDN is identical to the one I downloaded on April 2 — the MD5s and SHA1s match. At least we don’t have multiple final versions of Windows 8.1 Update on MSDN — yet.

Consumers (that is, anyone who isn’t hooked up to a WSUS update server or who works for a company with fewer than 1,000 XP machines) are taking a grossly unfair hit. If Microsoft’s going to offer a Windows 365 or set up three different versions of Windows 9, it’s going to have to do a whole lot better than this.

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