Winternals Acquisition Frequently Asked Questions

In July of 2006 Microsoft announced the acquisition of Winternals, a privately held (LP) company based in Austin, Texas and Sysinternals, a community forum site run by two of the principals from Winternals. Winternals is a leading provider of systems recovery tools for Windows-based enterprises worldwide, and Sysinternals is one of the leading community and enthusiast sites for people interested in information about the internals of the Windows operating system.

The Sysinternals utilities and forum can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/sysinternals.

Winternals continues to meet its existing customer and partner commitments. After investigating how these products and technologies could best complement existing Microsoft technologies to maximize future customer value, the decision was made to withdrawal Winternals Recovery Manager, Defrag Manager and Protection Manager in their current form from the market effective November 17th 2006. The functionality and usage scenarios of many of these products may be addressed by Microsoft offerings at a later date. The Winternals Administrator’s Pak will continue to be available from Winternals until April 30, 2007. Customers looking for desktop diagnostic and recovery tools similar to Administrator’s Pak should refer to the recently announced Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance. Please reference www.windowsvista.com/optimizeddesktop to learn more.

After talking with customers and partners, the functionality of Recovery Manager and Winternals Defrag Manager and their usage scenarios may be addressed by a future Microsoft offering, although that timeline has not yet been determined.

If you have an immediate need, you may wish to consider products from other vendors that may fit your requirements.

There are several tools in the Microsoft Systems Center which might meet your needs. Please reference http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter. If you have an immediate need, you may wish to consider products from other vendors that may fit your requirements, such as:

Winternals Protection Manager has been withdrawn from the product line. Many Protection Manager usage scenarios are addressed by the new User Account Control feature of Windows Vista.

If the User Account Control and Software Restriction Policies in Windows Vista do not meet your needs, you may wish to consider products from other vendors that may fit your requirements, such as:

Winternals continues to meet all its existing support commitments. Also it is important to keep in mind that all Winternals customers are also Microsoft customers and it is our aim to provide more value to these customers over time.

No, there are no plans for renewal of legacy support agreements from Winternals. However, customers can use Microsoft support incidents (existing or new) to get phone support on the Administrator’s Pak or any other Winternals product.

No. Existing Product Assurance plans do not cover existing or future Microsoft offerings. Product Assurance contains two components. 1) Maintenance and 2) Support. Maintenance only provides any future versions that Winternals ships of its products. While some of the functionality and usage scenarios may be addressed in Microsoft offerings, the content of the offering and its pricing and licensing models will change.

Yes. A customer can continue to use the software without support.

You may be eligible for special consideration upon purchase of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance license. Please contact your local reseller or Microsoft Account Manager to discuss options.