.NET Framework 1.1 Servicing Releases on Windows Update for 64-bit Systems

blairn — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 01:35:00 GMT

Among the most confusing stories that we have asked .NET Framework customers to understand has been .NET Framework 1.1 support on Windows Server 2003 and 64-bit versions of Windows. I've blogged about this before. Today I get to tell you that we've done right by putting .NET Framework 1.1 servicing releases on Windows Update for 64-bit platforms.

Microsoft releases security updates on the second Tuesday of every month and Windows Update releases non-security updates on the fourth Tuesday of every month. Well, today is the fourth Tuesday in March and we went live with .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 on Windows Update for supported 64-bit versions of Windows.

None of these are new releases; they are the exact same binaries that are already on Windows Update for .NET Framework 1.1 running on 32-bit Windows operating systems and have always been available for supported 64-bit Windows operating systems on Download Center. What's new is that now if you have .NET Framework 1.1 installed on your x64 or supported Itanium version of Windows then you can keep that .NET Framework 1.1 installation up-to-date using Windows Update, SUS, and WSUS.

It should be noted that there do exist performance issues running .NET Framework 1.1 on Itanium-based systems (here). There is also a known compatibility issue between ASP.NET 1.1 (a component of the .NET Framework 1.1) and IIS 6.0 on 64-bit versions of Windows (here). These are known issues and the current announcement does nothing to mitigate these concerns. Rather, we assume that if you have the .NET Framework 1.1 on a 64-bit Windows system then you have already evaluated and addressed these concerns for your environment.

The supported operating systems are the following:

Windows XP Professional x64 edition
Windows Server 2003 x64 editions
Windows Server 2003 for Itanium-based systems w/ Service Pack 1

Deployment Channels

blairn — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 05:26:00 GMT

I stated in an earlier post that "I am the person in charge of getting product updates (service packs and hotfixes) for Visual Studio and the .NET Framework into distribution channels like Windows Update, Microsoft Update, and the Microsoft Download Center." It occured to me that some of you might care which updates go where. If you do, read on!

In a nutshell, updates to the .NET Framework go on Windows Update while updates for everything else (in this case, Visual Studio) go on Microsoft Update. Because all Windows Update content is on Microsoft Update as well (but not vice-versa), one could look at that the other way around and say that all updates (Visual Studio and the .NET Framework) go to Microsoft Update while only .NET Framework updates go to Windows Update. All updates that go to either Windows Update or Microsoft Update must go to the Microsoft Download Center as well.

Tables have been known to help:

Developer Division Deployment Channels
Product	Windows Update	Microsoft Update	Download Center
.NET Framework	Yes	Yes	Yes
Visual Studio 2005	No	Yes	Yes
Visual Studio 2002, 2003	No	TBD	Yes

You may be saying to yourself, "I've never seen any Visual Studio updates on Microsoft Update." That's true, but we're working on it. Expect to see updates targeting Visual Studio 2005 on Microsoft Update starting in Q1 of calendar year 2006. We will also be evaluating whether to service Visual Studio.NET 2002 and Visual Studio.NET 2003 in the same way. These latter Visual Studio versions (2002, 2003) are more complicated because they were released before Microsoft Update existed and therefore were not built with Microsoft Update integration in mind. We'll need to make do with what we have for these. Let me know how we do!

Update Deployment for Visual Studio and the .NET Framework : Work in Progress

.NET Framework 1.1 Servicing Releases on Windows Update for 64-bit Systems

Deployment Channels