Something old, something new
You might recall that Microsoft committed itself to releasing new service packs in a more timely manner. Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 5 (SP5) appeared in May, leaving a gap of only 6 months between service pack releases (Microsoft released SP4 in November 1998). SP5 contains all the earlier service packs and hotfixes, so you don't need to have any prior fixes loaded—you can load SP5 to instantly update your NT 4.0 system.
According to Microsoft, SP5 doesn't add any new features to the OS, which explains why SP5 emerged so quickly after SP4. As of this writing, Microsoft admitted that the SP5 reference material was incomplete, but based on the initial documentation, this service pack corrects numerous known NT 4.0 bugs. Microsoft classifies these fixes into six categories: base operating system, Year 2000 (Y2K) issues, networking, shell, security, and other. You can find a list of each category's fixes at Microsoft's Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/ nts/downloads/ recommended/sp5/updates.asp. This site also contains links to Microsoft articles.
What's New?
You can read about post-SP3 hotfixes and SP4 in "Hotfixes to Secure Systems," February 1999, and Mark Minasi, "Service Pack 4.0," March 1999. In this article, I concentrate on SP5 fixes that Microsoft released as post-SP4 hotfixes and discuss the new items in SP4 (that you can also find in SP5). To access a list of SP5's new features, go to the "Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 5.0 Readme" file at http://www.microsoft.com/ ntserver/nts/ downloads/recommended/ sp5/readme.asp.
SP4 Hotfixes Bundled in SP5
Aside from the list of OS corrections, SP5 includes several post-SP4 hotfixes, which I'll discuss. For information about each hotfix and related Web sites, see the sidebar "Microsoft Articles."
For example, the update.inf file that Microsoft included in SP4 to fix the winprint.dll file contains the wrong pathname. SP5 corrects this problem. Be sure to read the Microsoft article "Windows NT 4.0 SP4 Setup Does Not Update Winprint.dll."
The Post-SP4 Roll-up fix contains seven hotfixes, which Microsoft rolled into one file to simplify installation. This fix contains TCPIP-Fix, Clik-Fix, SMS-Fix, MSV1-Fix, Infget-Fix, Nprpc-Fix, and Gina-Fix. The Microsoft article "WinNT 4.0 Post-Service Pack 4 Hotfixes Combined into One Package" contains details about this fix. The fixes and the eliminated problems include the following:
TCPIP-Fix. After you load SP4, the TCP/IP stack might not start up properly because of an initialization failure with 3Com's DynamicAccess driver. This incident occurs on multiprocessor systems, and the problem might also manifest itself with other network drivers. The Microsoft article "Intermediate Network Driver Causes STOP 0x0000001E on MP PC" contains the details.
Clik-Fix. SP4 incorrectly labels an Iomega Click 40! drive as a disk and assigns the device as B:\. Microsoft released a new driver to remedy this bug, as detailed in the Microsoft article "Windows NT 4.0 Does Not Recognize ATAPI Iomega Clik 40! Drive."
SMS-Fix. Severe memory leaks occur when the SNMP agent is under stress. This problem occurs because the agent fails to release a memory buffer. The Microsoft article "SNMP Agent Leaks Memory When Queried" details this problem.
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