Microsoft Corp. today will release Service Pack 5 for the Windows NT 4.0 operating system.
Unlike its predecessor, Service Pack 5 is not a mandatory upgrade. Many observers considered SP4 such a major change in the OS that it was viewed as a "Windows NT 4.5" release.
Officials for Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., said the new service pack consists mainly of bug fixes and "post-SP4 Y2K updates," even though Service Pack 4 was supposed to remedy all Y2K issues with the NT platform.
Even with the Y2K patches, Microsoft officials insist the upgrade is not required.
"For year 2000 purposes, Microsoft does not require users to migrate to SP5 to attain compliance," wrote one official via e-mail. "Microsoft recommends that customers examine the specific Y2K updates in SP5 to determine whether to deploy [it]."
Microsoft officials in the past have said they want to make more regular Service Pack releases for their OS products, possibly one per quarter. With Windows 2000's release imminent, though, there's no word on whether a Service Pack 6 will
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