The Desktop QFE Installer component has been "temporarily removed"
from the OEM secure site. No reason was given.
Maybe somebody from Microsoft can at least clarify whether there is a
known technical problem with the component? As I've described in my
posting on May 18, the component unfortunately doesn't work for us,
and we've run out of ideas.
It would be very helpful to learn if there is an accepted technical
problem that somebody works on, or if we better give up any hope right
away.
OK, here's the skinny.
The first time we dropped this component (I can't even bring myself to
say the name anymore), it was pulled due to licensing issues that were
brought up. This time, however, we pulled it because of a technical
issue. What technical issue? Glad you asked...
There's this known issue in XPE SP1, where XPE SP1 runtimes don't ID
themselves as SP1. Look at the My Computer, Properties page and you
won't see "Service Pack 1" anywhere. Look at the watermark in the lower
left of eval runtimes and they won't say SP1 either. This problem is
caused by a missing reg key called CSDVersion - the high order byte of
this REG_DWORD is the SP level. FOr SP1, it should be 0x0100, but since
it's not there, the system thinks it's actually XP Gold. No problems,
not big enough to QFE, so we issued info on the workaround - add the key
to your runtime directly or as an Extra Registry Resource in the
configuration.
The problem comes with recent security updates and bulletins designed
for XP Pro (which the Desktop QFE Installer component enables). Some of
them, notably the Help and Support Services update, contain two
different updates - one for XP Gold, one for XP SP1. The installer
queries the system for which service pack level it's on and installs the
correct fix.
So, on an XPE SP1 system without the CSDVersion key, the installer
thinks it's running on an XP Gold system and proceeds to install the XP
Gold fix. The problem is those files are an earlier version than the XP
SP1 files already on the system. So nothing gets replaced. The
installer thinks everything is fine - it did what it was supposed to do
- and returns success, even though nothing has changed. Definitely not
good juju...
The solution is to add the CSDVersion reg key to a component, so it's
built into the runtime without needing a hack workaround. Since Desktop
QFE Installer is a macro component, we can't add the resource there.
The CSDVersion key does exist in XPE SP2, in the Client/Server
Runtime(Console) component, so we decided to add the key to that
component in SP1. The delay is caused by the fact that this component
had already been QFE'd previously, so we had to make sure the new change
didn't disturb the other changes.
Now you know the story, and I apologize for keeping everyone in the dark
about it.
