Microsoft has issued an alert about incompatibility
issues in its customer relationship management suite caused by
installing the Windows XP Service Pack 2.
In a Knowledge Base article, Microsoft states that its Business
Solutions CRM application Version 1.0 running on the XP platform
will not work if Service Pack 2 is installed.
Microsoft urged those customers affected to upgrade to CRM and
CRM Sales for Outlook 1.2 before installing XP Service Pack 2.
Once running CRM Version 1.2, updates are required to the
Microsoft CRM Server and Microsoft Sales for Outlook client, along
with several manual work-arounds.
The updates for the Microsoft CRM Server and CRM Sales for
Outlook Version 1.2 are posted at the Microsoft Download
Center.
At the Convergence 2004 application user conference in March,
Microsoft users said that while the application had some minor
bugs, they found it reasonably stable.
At that show, Doug Burgum, the president of Microsoft's Business
Solutions Unit, pointed out that Version 1 was a new application,
and that Version 1.2 "was not a small update but had a year's worth
of development efforts". He also noted that Version 1.2 offered
additional "stability and performance" enhancements.
"Enhanced security features in XP SP2 meant some of the default
behaviours of Internet Explorer and desktop security zones have
changed," a Microsoft spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail.
"Microsoft has been advising customers throughout the SP2
development process that some applications, including Microsoft's
own, would need updates to work as intended with SP2."
Marc L Songini writes for Computerworld