60% of Windows Vista to be Rewritten

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60% Of Windows Vista Code To Be Rewritten

David Richards - Friday, 24 March 2006

Up to 60% of the code in the new consumer version of Microsoft new Vista operating system is set to be rewritten as the Company "scrambles" to fix internal problems a Microsoft insider has confirmed to SHN.

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In an effort to meet a dealine of the 2007 CES show in Las Vegas Microsoft has pulled programmers from the highly succesful Xbox team to help resolve many problems associated with entertainment and media centre functionality inside the OS. The team are also working closely with engineers from the Intel Viiv team. and it is now expected that the next version of Viiv could be delayed to line up with the launch of the consumer version of Vista at the 2007 CES Show in Las Vegas.

One of the key components of the consumer version of Vista is the Media Centre code. This will be an optional package in the same way that Microsoft currently sell a Professional and Home version of XP. With Vista there will not be a seperate Media Centre SKU.

Microsoft has also admitted that it has major problems in it's Windows division and has has immediatly initiated a total restructure of the division, a move that comes after a costly delay in rolling out its Vista program.

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This, after an announcement to delay Vista until "January 2007". Now, I'm just a meager Computer Science student, but with the (limited) experience I've had with huge coding projects (and none of them NEARLY as large as Windows), the idea of trying to rewrite 60% of Windows' codebase in a mere 9 months (It's almost April) does NOT seem like a good idea. Even assuming you threw a giant fleet of programmers at it, it's highly unlikely that you could get it coded, properly tested, and finalized for launch before then. I anticipate either a longer delay or some major security and/or stability flaws.

Either that or some employee is thoroughly confused and really shouldn't be talking to the press about stuff he doesn't know. It'll be interesting.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Eleo

Does sound scary, but as long as the parts being recoded aren't essential to the stability of the operating system, it might not be a big deal. I hope this is modular stuff they're working on.

I'd love to believe that, but with Microsoft's motto of "If it's not integrated in as tightly as possible it's EVIL", a flaw anywhere could turn into a major security issue.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Russ, I have a grand total of 2GB of RAM spread across the 4 desktops in my house.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.