Microsoft confirms that it is currently hard at work hammering away at Windows Live OneCare 2.0. In this context, an update for the antivirus is in the making and planned for the end of the month. Windows Live OneCare 2.0 is designed as the successor of Windows Live OneCare 1.6. The latest version of the Redmond company's security solution for the consumer antivirus software business was made available to end users in mid November 2007. However, the evolution from Windows Live OneCare 1.6 to Windows Live OneCare 2.0 has been anything but smooth. Microsoft acknowledged the fact that approximately 1% of the entire install base of Windows Live OneCare 2.0 has had to deal with problems affecting the antivirus, when moving to version 2.0.

"The v2 beta was ongoing since the middle of last year. v2 was released to production in November and upgrades began to be deployed at that time. Because of a higher than anticipated number of problems that had not been seen in the public and private beta, the upgrades were stopped and the data evaluated and the program fixed. There will continue to be fixes deployed. If we have a known problem with a known solution, you'll find it here. When you are one of the unlucky ones to encounter a problem that does not have a known cause or solution, you can poke at it yourself, ask here if anyone has had the same problem and how did they resolve it, or contact support", stated Stephen Boots, the Windows Live OneCare Forum Moderator.

At this point in time, Microsoft is in fact in the process of migrating the Windows Live OneCare 1.6 users to the latest version of the security solution. Larry Brennan, lead product manager for Windows Live, revealed that the Redmond company would not pull the plug on the automatic OneCare 2.0 upgrading process, despite the inherent issues reported. At the same time, users that have gone to OneCare 2.0 cannot roll back to v. 1.6, even if they are experiencing issues. The update for Windows Live OneCare 2.0 is expected to drop on January 31st, according to Beyond Binary.

"There *were* too many problems with the v2 upgrade and too many remain now. I believe that the test bed needs to be evaluated and expanded since the nearly infinite configurations that OneCare will be running on means that exposure to more configurations is crucial. Each release needs to be much better", Boots added.