7 responses to “.NET Patch of a Patch of a Patch”

1. 

   Liz March 18th, 2009 at 01:53

   Ummm oops. I have installed KB951847 on my 32 bit system about six weeks ago. So far, no issues that I’ve noticed.. Should I worry?
   Thanks
   Liz
   PS. I can’t seem to find XPS document viewer on my system. Do the 32 bit versions of Vista have it? I have an XPS document writer listed under my printers, but no viewer.
   

2. 

   Yuhong Bao March 18th, 2009 at 03:15

   “If you install the “.NET Framework 3.5 SP 1″ patch you actually get three versions of .NET Framework installed on your system, regardless of which version(s) of .NET you may already have: .NET Framework 2.0 SP2, .NET Framework 3.0 SP2, and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.”
   Well, as a .NET developer I know about this mess. The confusion began when MS renamed WinFX to .NET Framework 3.0, despite the fact that the CLR was not updated by .NET Framework 3.x. Think of .NET Framework 3.x as an add-on on top of .NET Framework 2.0 that adds things like WPF and WCF.
   “But there’s no separate confirmation that .NET Framework 3.0 SP2 also has the bug.”
   Because .NET Framework 3.0 SP2 is where the bug actually is. .NET Framework 3.5 is just an add-on on top of .NET Framework 3.0.

3. 

   woody March 18th, 2009 at 06:07

   Nope. Ain’t broke, don’t fix. You should only worry if some applications stop working.

   The XPS Viewer download is here, but unless you really need it, I wouldn’t bother. Microsoft is trying to take over the PDF realm and I don’t see any reason at all to use XPS.

4. 

   Yuhong Bao March 18th, 2009 at 13:01

   “The XPS Viewer download is here, but unless you really need it, I wouldn’t bother.”
   That one is for XP, I think. For Vista go to something like “Turn a Windows feature on or off” in Control Panel, you will see a list. XPS Viewer should be somewhere in there.

5. 

   Liz March 18th, 2009 at 14:41

   Hi Woody
   All is well. I’ve stopped worrying!
   Thank you!

6. 

   Liz March 19th, 2009 at 00:44

   Yuhong,
   It is, and it’s ticked on funny enough. I also found some interesting .Net stuff in there as well, but , as Woody says, ain’t broke don’t fix.
   I don’t plan on messing with it..
   Thanks for your help!

7. 

   Jeremy April 25th, 2009 at 02:52

   It is confusing, but it is not really 3 different versions of the full framework even though they are numbered that way. There is not a compatibility problem between the 3.

   Framework 2.0 is the core version. It has 3 service packs available for it. All current .NET programs utilize this core (unless they are using 1.0 or 1.1 and you have that installed on your machine as well).

   .NET 3.0 just adds more tools to the developers toolkit (WCF, WPF, WF, Cardspace). The rest of the development is simply utilizing the 2.0 Framework. 2.0 is required for .NET 3.0.

   .NET 3.5 does the same thing that 3.0 did and takes it a step further. Still, though, you are still using the .NET 2.0 Framework core. .NET 3.5 Requires .NET 2.0 SP 1 and 3.0 SP1.

   The Service Pack to 3.5 adds more tools and fixes a few things. 3.5 SP1 Requires 2.0 SP2 and 3.0 SP2.

   The newer framework numbers here are simply supersets of the 2.0 framework and do not replace it. Because of this, 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 based applications can peacefully co-exist on the same machine.

   Now, whether the Service Pack to 2.0 breaks anything itself is a separate issue. SP2 did and they released another patch for it.