Windows 2003 Service Pack 1 and Dell Servers

I have seen a couple of posts in the newsgroups about people having problems installing Windows 2003 SP1 on Dell servers that are running Dell Open Manage. I have installed SP1 on a number of Dell Servers with Dell OpenManage v4.2 and have not had problems, but some people are reporting problems with the BSOD (blue screen of death) during or after installation.

The Windows 2003 Service Pack 1 readme file indicates that the version of OpenManage that should be used with W2K3 SP1 is OpenManage 4.4. Right now, the latest version of OpenManage is v4.3, but Dell expects to have v4.4 out by mid-to-late June of 2005.

If you are running Dell servers, you should read visit Dell Support's Windows 2003 SP1 page prior to attempting your updates. Better to spend some time reading than to troubleshoot bluescreens later!