I’ve been running Windows Vista on my laptop for almost a year now and I have to say that it has its share of annoyances. That being said, I have high hopes for the latest version, Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1. You can download it either 1 of 2 ways.
You can turn on your "Automatic Updates".
1. Click the "Start" button, point to "All Programs", and then click "Windows Update".
2. In the left pane, click "Change settings".
3. Select "Install updates automatically (recommended)".
4. Under "Recommended updates", select the "Include recommended updates when downloading, installing, or notifying me about updates" check box, and then click "OK". If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
Or in the event that you have multiple Windows Vista computers to install it on:
1. You can download the standalone update yourself from this link.
I haven't actually installed the update myself because I'm still downloading it. The standalone update is 434 Megabytes and the Windows update version is approximately 65 Megabytes. I don't generally enjoy being one of Microsoft's guinea pigs, which is why I haven't installed one of the release candidates. If there are problems with the patch, I generally have the problems but not enough time to truly fix them. So I wait for the full version and it is finally available for download.
In general the list of changes looks very good. Admittedly, users may find the "Grace Timer exploit" change to be annoying, but that's only if your version of Vista isn't legitimate. In which case, you probably shouldn't be downloading the update anyway.
As per Microsoft's "Notable_Changes_in_Windows_Vista_Service_Pack_1.doc" these are some of the changes and enhancements with SP1 that I am looking forward to.
Hardware Ecosystem Support and Enhancements
1. Adds support for exFAT, a new file system supporting larger overall capacity and larger files, which will be used in Flash memory storage and consumer devices.
2. Enhances support for high density drives by adding new icons and labels that will identify HD-DVD and Blu-ray Drives as high density drives.
3. Enhances the MPEG-2 decoder to support content protection across a user accessible bus on Media Center systems configured with Digital Cable Tuner hardware. This also effectively enables higher levels of hardware decoder acceleration for commercial DVD playback on some hardware.
Reliability Improvements
1. SP1 addresses issues many of the most common causes of crashes and hangs in Windows Vista, as reported by Windows Error Reporting. These include issues relating to Windows Calendar, Windows Media Player, and a number of drivers included with Windows Vista.
2. Improves reliability by preventing data-loss while ejecting NTFS-formatted removable-media.
3. An improved SRT (Startup Repair Tool), which is part of the Windows Recovery environment (WinRE), can now fix PCs unbootable due to certain missing OS files.
Performance and Power Consumption Improvements
Performance improvements vary from PC to PC based on hardware, environment, scenarios, and usage, so different customers will experience varying levels of benefits. About 20-25% of these improvements will be released separately via Windows update, prior to Windows Vista SP1.
1. Improves the performance of browsing network file shares by consuming less bandwidth.
2. Improves power consumption when the display is not changing by allowing the processor to remain in its sleep state which consumes less energy.
3. Improves power consumption and battery life by addressing an issue that causes a hard disk to continue spinning when it should spin down, in certain circumstances.
4. Improves the speed of adding and extracting files to and from a compressed (zipped) folder.
5. Significantly improves the speed of moving a directory with many files underneath.
6. Improves performance while copying files using BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service).
7. Improves performance over Windows Vista's current performance across the following scenarios:
o 25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine
o 45% faster when copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system
o 50% faster when copying files from a remote SP1 system to a local SP1 system
8. Improves the performance of the user login experience on corporate PCs outside of corporate environments (e.g., a corporate laptop taken home for the evening), making it comparable with PCs within the corporate environment.
Security Improvements
1. Improves security on wired networks by enabling single sign on (SSO) for authenticated wired networks. The single sign on experience presents the user with a single point of credential entry rather than being double prompted for local and network logon.
2. The cryptographic random number generation is improved to gather seed entropy from more sources, including a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) when available, and replaces the general purpose pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) with an AES-256 counter mode PRNG for both user and kernel mode.
3. Improves BitLocker Drive Encryption by offering an additional multi-factor authentication method that combines a key protected by the TPM (Trusted Platform Module) with a Startup Key stored on a USB storage device and a user-generated Personal Identification Number (PIN).
4. Enhances the BitLocker encryption support to volumes other than bootable volumes in Windows Vista (for Enterprise and Ultimate SKUs).
5. Enables a standard user to invoke the CompletePC Backup application, provided that user can supply administrator credentials. Previously, only administrators could launch the application.
Support for New Technologies and Standards
1. Adds support for new strong cryptographic algorithms used in IPsec. SHA-256, AES-GCM, and AES-GMAC for ESP and AH, ECDSA, SHA-256, and SHA-384 for IKE and AuthIP.
2. Adds the NIST SP 800-90 Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC) pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) to the list of available PRNG in Windows Vista.
3. Adds support for SSTP (Secure Sockets Tunnel Protocol), a remote access VPN tunneling protocol that will be part of Microsoft's RRAS (Routing and Remote Access Service) platform. SSTP helps provide full-network VPN remote access connections over SSL, removing some of the VPN connectivity challenges that other VPN tunnels face traversing NAT, web proxies, and firewalls.
4. Adds full support for the latest IEEE draft of 802.11n wireless networking.
5. Enhances Windows Firewall and IPsec to use the new cryptographic algorithms that are Suite B compliant.
Desktop Administration and Management
1. Allows users and administrators to control which volumes the disk defragmenter runs on.
2. Allows users and administrators using Network Diagnostics to solve the most common file sharing problems, not just network connection problems.
3. Adds a WMI interface as a replacement for the MoveUser.exe tool which was removed from Windows Vista. This allows customers to remap an existing workgroup or domain user account profile to a new domain user account profile.
4. Allows an administrator to configure properties of a network, such as the name, and deploy it network-wide via a Group Policy snap-in.
Setup and Deployment Improvements
1. Enables support for hotpatching, a reboot-reduction servicing technology designed to maximize uptime. It works by allowing Windows components to be updated (or "patched") while they are still in use by a running process. Hotpatch-enabled update packages are installed via the same methods as traditional update packages, and will not trigger a system reboot.
2. Improves patch deployment by retrying failed updates in cases where multiple updates are pending and the failure of one update causes other updates to fail as well.
3. Improves the uninstallation experience for OS updates by improving the uninstallation routines in custom OS installation code.
General Improvements and Enhancements
1. With SP1, Windows Vista will report the amount of system memory installed rather than report the amount of system memory available to the OS. Therefore 32-bit systems equipped with 4GB of RAM will report all 4GB in many places throughout the OS, such as the System Control Panel. However, this behavior is dependent on having a compatible BIOS, so not all users may notice this change.
2. SP1 reduces the number of UAC (User Account Control) prompts from 4 to 1 when creating or renaming a folder at a protected location.
3. Users are now required to enter a password hint during the initial setup of Windows Vista SP1. This change was made based on feedback from top PC manufactures that many customers frequently do not remember their password and because the administrator account is turned off by default on Windows Vista, these users do not have a way to access to their PCs. A password hint helps avoid this frustrating scenario.
4. Improves compatibility with 3rd party diagnostic tools that rely on raw sockets by applying the same delivery logic to control (ICMP v4 and v6) and regular packages.
General Annoyances
1. Users who did not opt-in to the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) will be prompted again to join after installing SP1. The experience will remain the same and the default will continue to be opt-out.
2. Improved instrumentation allows additional data to be sent to Microsoft via the CEIP (Customer Experience Improvement Program) when enabled. This telemetry data led to the identification of numerous issues that are addressed in SP1 and resulted in improvement in the reliability of OS servicing. (CEIP is respectful of personally identifiable information and adheres to terms discussed in the EULA.)
Labels: General PC Advice
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Tim,
The vista review you put forward was a appreciating one.
But you might have forgotten to add in your annoyment that Vista is one of mishaps for MS..
What do you have to say on this part..