I'm doing a 4 year PhD and I just started this year. But for some reason we have to submit the FINAL VERSION of our Introductions for our thesis at the end of first year!! I think it is mad because by the time the whole thesis is finished in 4years time the info. in that Introduction might not be relevant anymore!!

yeah, that's pretty bad. I'm planning to write my introduction LAST (after you've got the rest of the thesis sorted I reckon the introduction will come quite easily) and luckily no-one's forcing me to do otherwise. Try to find out from others if this is REALLY the final version.

Sounds totally barking to me!

However, I'm sure you will be able to revise this introductory chapter. I had to submit an introduction/literature review when I registered for my PhD and the intro/lit review chapters in my final thesis were *loosely* based on these, but as you say, they needed a fair bit of updating after 3 years.

Is it not the same thing as the lit review? I have to do mine for after xmas and it will be the first chapter of my eventual thesis. However I can modify it as I go along, obviously.

It depends on your field, your project, your Uni, your supervisors, the weather etc etc. Some theses have a combined intro/lit review, others have separate chapters. In the absence of very strict thesis writing guidelines, you need to see what works best for you. In the end, I had a fairly substantial lit review chapter (approx. 55 pages) and a tightly focussed introduction (4 pages).

my 9-month report includes the lit review. I think its a good thing as it means u have a massive chunk of writing out of the way and will only require modifications etc.