Vista SP1 on February 4!

Discussion in 'Operating Systems' started by Whiplashwang, Feb 1, 2008.

  1. Whiplashwang

    Whiplashwang Ancient Guru

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  2. dominant1

    dominant1 Guest

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    good news and good find ....
     
  3. moab600

    moab600 Ancient Guru

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    We'll have to see if it does come close to some games performance to XP, and at other applications.
    I tend to believe that Vista will be slower than XP always.
     
  4. Psytek

    Psytek Ancient Guru

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    "Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel, confirmed that service pack 1 will be released either in October or November 2007."

    Are you calling Otellini a lier ?? well... are ya?

    lol, I'll believe it when I see it... and maybe not even until I've had it installed for a few days.

    "Received Word" is blog code for "We get rumour... main blog turn on"
     

  5. dominant1

    dominant1 Guest

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    Release Notes:


    Hardware Support & Enhancements:

    * Adds support for new UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) industry standard PC firmware for 64-bit systems with functional parity with legacy BIOS firmware, which allows Windows Vista SP1 to install to GPT format disks, boot and resume from hibernate using UEFI firmware.

    * Adds support for x64 EFI network boot.

    * Adds support for Direct3D® 10.1, an update to Direct3D 10 that extends the API to support new hardware features, enabling 3D application and game developers to make more complete and efficient use of the upcoming generations of graphics hardware.



    * 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.

    * Adds support for SD Advanced DMA (ADMA) on compliant SD standard host controllers. This new transfer mechanism, which is expected to be supported in SD controllers soon, will improve transfer performance and decrease CPU utilization.

    * Adds support for creating a single DVD media that boots on PCs with either BIOS or EFI.

    * 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.

    * Adds support to enable new types of Windows Media Center Extenders, such as digital televisions and networked DVD players, to connect to Windows Media Center PCs.

    General Improvements & Enhancements:

    Default Desktop Search

    SP1 includes a number of changes which allow computer manufacturers and consumers to select a default desktop search program similar to the way they currently select defaults for third-party web browsers and media players.

    That means that in addition to the numerous ways a user could access a third party search solution in Windows Vista, they can now get to their preferred search results from additional entry points in the Start Menu and Explorer Windows in Windows Vista with SP1.

    Third party software vendors simply need to register their search application using the newly provided protocol in Windows Vista SP1 to enable these options for their customers.



    Reported Size Of System Memory

    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.



    User Account Control (UAC) Prompts

    SP1 reduces the number of UAC (User Account Control) prompts from 4 to 1 when creating or renaming a folder at a protected location.



    Licensing User Interface & User Experience

    Improvements in the Licensing User Interface and User Experience including more details in the help about activation and what happens if user does not activate; more detailed and descriptive dialog text; raw error codes replaced with easily comprehensible text.



    Ultimate Extras Control Panel

    SP1 modifies the text in the Ultimate Extras Control Panel to describe the Ultimate Extras program in more general terms.



    Vista Scanning Experience

    Upon scanning a photo with the Vista scanning experience, SP1 will open Explorer rather than opening Windows Photo Gallery.



    Password Hint

    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.



    Compatibility With Third Party Diagnostic Tools

    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.



    Windows Genuine Advantage

    While not reflected in the initial release candidate, we will also be making changes effective with SP1 in how we differentiate the experience customers have using non-genuine versions of our software. This is based on feedback we heard from volume license customers in particular as part of our Windows Genuine Advantage program.



    Anti-Hack Patches

    Also coming with SP1 but not in the current release candidate, we will also be including updates that deal with two exploits we have seen, which can affect system stability for our customers –

    * The OEM BIOS exploit, which involves modifying system files and the BIOS of the motherboard to mimic a type of product activation performed on copies of Windows that are pre-installed by OEMs in the factory.

    * The Grace Timer exploit, which attempts to reset the "grace time" limit between installation and activation to something like the year 2099 in some cases.


    Setup & Deployment Improvements:

    * Enables global organizations to more easily deploy SP1 in a multi-lingual environment, as SP1 includes all 36 language packs. However, this change contributes to the increased size of the standalone package.

    * Enables users to get updated Help content via a separate downloadable package. This package will be released around SP1 release.

    * 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.

    * Improves migration and upgrade scenarios relating to the component that allows alternate text input "modalities" like speech, handwriting, and multi-byte character input editors in applications that were not written specifically to support them.

    * Improves OS deployment by enabling 64-bit versions of Windows Vista to be installed from a 32-bit OS. This will allow IT professionals to maintain just a single WinPE image.

    * Improves OS deployment by supporting the installation of offline boot critical storage drivers. WinPE will automatically look to a hidden partition for drivers. It will search that partition recursively, and if boot critical drivers are present they will be loaded. Non-boot critical drivers will be picked up and staged, but not loaded prior to the OS coming online.

    * 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.

    * Enables reliable OS installation by optimizing OS installers so that they are run only when required during patch installation. Fewer installers operating results in fewer points of potential failure during installation, which leads to more robust and reliable installation.

    * Improves overall install time for updates by optimizing the query for installed OS updates.

    * Improves robustness during the patch installation by being resilient to transient errors such as sharing violations or access violations.

    * Improves robustness of transient failures during the disk cleanup of old OS files after install.

    * Improves the uninstallation experience for OS updates by improving the uninstallation routines in custom OS installation code.

    * Improves reliability of OS updates by making them more resilient to unexpected interruptions, such as power failure.

    * 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.)

    * After the SP1 version of the OPK (OEM pre-installation kit) is installed, further OPK updates will not be required if a servicing stack update is issued. (The servicing stack is the underlying set of binaries used to update the system). Post SP1, offline images may be updated using the servicing stack binaries contained in the image rather than the servicing stack binaries in the OPK.

    Security Improvements:

    * Windows Vista SP1 includes all previously released Security Bulletin fixes which affect Windows Vista.

    * SP1 includes Secure Development Lifecycle process updates, where Microsoft identifies the root cause of each security bulletin and improves our internal tools to eliminate code patterns that could lead to future vulnerabilities.

    * Data Execution Protection (DEP) is a memory-protection feature available beginning with Windows XP and Server 2003. SP1 improves security with a new set of Win32 APIs to allow programmatic control over a process's DEP policy. This will provide application developers with finer control on a process's DEP settings for security, testability, compatibility, and reliability.

    * Improves the trustworthiness of data presented in Windows Security Center (WSC) by ensuring that only authenticated security applications can communicate with WSC.

    * 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.

    * 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.

    * Improves security in smart card scenarios:
    o Introduction of a new PIN channel to securely collect smart card PINs via a PC. This new capability mitigates a number of attacks that today would require using an external PIN reader to prevent.
    o Enables smart cards that use biometric authentication instead of a PIN.

    * Improves security over Teredo interface by blocking unsolicited traffic by default. This has already been addressed in a Security Update for Windows Vista (KB935807).

    * 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).

    * Enhanced the BitLocker encryption support to volumes other than bootable volumes in Windows Vista (for Enterprise and Ultimate SKUs).

    * Enables a standard user to invoke the CompletePC Backup application, provided that user can supply administrator credentials. Previously, only administrators could launch the application.

    * The Remote Desktop client in Windows Vista SP1 provides user interface improvements for user and server authentication. The RDP client streamlines the multiple steps end users must follow to providing their credentials to Windows Server 2003 (or earlier) Terminal Servers, and simplifies the management of previously saved credentials.


    Alignment With Windows Server 2008:

    Windows Vista is aligned with Windows Server 2008, meaning that many files are common to both products. A result of this design is that there are cases where a common binary is modified to enable a server scenario that has limited or no effect on Windows Vista SP1 capabilities. Here are few examples:



    File Sharing

    The file sharing subsystem on Windows Vista only allows 10 concurrent inbound connections. Windows Server 2008 must scale to support thousands of concurrent connections.

    During the testing and customer feedback phase of Windows Server 2008 development, the file sharing subsystems are tuned and refined to optimize the file sharing stack for performance, scalability and reliability. This level of tuning and refinement are not typically applicable on a 10-connection limit client, but are critical to a file server role.

    Changes like this are done primarily for the server scenarios, although these changes may also benefit Windows Vista SP1.



    IIS 7

    IIS was included in some Windows Vista SKUs to enable web-based developers to write and test their applications. IIS in Windows Server 2008 is a significant server role which requires Internet-level scalability and performance requirements.

    The IIS7 components have gone through significant performance and reliability enhancements since Windows Vista originally shipped, in order to be a large-scale server component. These changes do not affect most Windows Vista users who do not even have the IIS7 components installed.

    However, because a Windows Vista and Windows Server are aligned, these changes are included in Windows Vista SP1.



    Concurrent User Support

    Key subsystems such as the Windows Logon process and the core kernel need only support user-switching scenarios on Windows Vista. However, on Windows Server 2008, where a Terminal Server may have thousands of users logged in simultaneously, these subsystems must be tuned for maximum performance and reliability. Changes like this are done primarily for the server scenarios, although they may also benefit Windows Vista SP1.

    Reliability Improvements

    Reliability improvements vary from PC to PC based on hardware, environment, and usage. Customers will experience varying levels of benefit.

    * 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.

    * Improves reliability by preventing data-loss while ejecting NTFS-formatted removable-media.

    * Improves reliability of IPSec connections over IPv6 by ensuring by ensuring that all Neighbor Discovery RFC traffic is IPsec exempted.

    * Improves certain problem scenarios where a driver goes to sleep with incomplete packet transmissions by ensuring the driver is given enough time to transmit or discard any outstanding packets before going to sleep.

    * Improves wireless ad-hoc connection (computer-to-computer wireless connections) success rate.

    * Improves the success of peer-to-peer connections, such as Windows Meeting Space or Remote Assistance applications, when both PCs are behind symmetric firewalls.

    * Improves Windows Vista's built-in file backup solution to include EFS encrypted files in the backup.

    * Improves Windows Vista's built-in file backup solution to include EFS encrypted files in the backup.

    * Windows Vista SP1 introduces a public hang reporting API that can be used by applications to report hangs.
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2008
  6. NvidiaFreak

    NvidiaFreak Ancient Guru

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    OWNED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    Enjoy vista pirate people because you will lose all of your data because windows will stop working after SP1 is install. and if those people who dont want to install SP1 well you going to miss out of alot of improves. so look like i got to buy vista about feb 5 with devil may cry 4 for pc as well.
     
  7. Gameslove

    Gameslove Master Guru

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    What about final release Xp SP3 RC?
     
  8. Andrés

    Andrés Guest

    Great news!!!

    You know, many crackers around the world see this as a prize (so is Crysis for example, which saw its 1.1 patch cracked in only one day). They will compete to be the first to release a cracked version of the SP1 installer, or cracked versions of the Vista DVD with SP1 slipstreamed on it. So on a hand you are right, many will lose access to their computers if they have a cracked Vista and allow SP1 to be installed, but others will just have to wait for a few days until a cracked SP1 is released.
     
  9. Devolution

    Devolution Ancient Guru

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    HatreD will probably have the anti-pirate OEM patch cracked within a month. Yar.
     
  10. moab600

    moab600 Ancient Guru

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    there ain't thing of MS that hasn't been pirated, what makes you think that Vista invulnerable to that??
    For some reason i think SP1 will be disappointing, while it does improve vista quite a lot, i don't think it will have the edge over XP and maybe performance of Vista and XP will be equal at all or most application but never on low end PC, still Vista is useless.
     

  11. Andrés

    Andrés Guest

    I hope SP1 fixes the data corruption errors I have when I install Ultimate on my Asus P5E. Latest drivers and all that, it starts corrupting files right away on all partitions every time I install it (I tried 6 times so far). I believe this is due to hardware incompatibility, so I hope SP1 fixes this so I can install it finally and have my dual boot to enjoy DX10 effects :D. I have Vista Home Basic on my Compaq notebook too, so I'll be able to test it there and see what changes :)
     
  12. moab600

    moab600 Ancient Guru

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    there is no DX10 right now, at least not better than DX9, so you can erase that from ur list.
     
  13. Anarion

    Anarion Ancient Guru

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    Naah... LOTRO in DX10 looks better and I haven't noticed any performance difference really at all.
     
  14. RandyB

    RandyB Banned

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    The data corruption isn't due to MB drivers. I have no such problem.
    If your MB's defective - return it.
     
  15. Andrés

    Andrés Guest

    I'm sure it's just an incompatibility problem, because I only have data corruption under Vista. XP doesn't pose that problem, neither Ubuntu.
     

  16. ScoobyDooby

    ScoobyDooby Guest

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    orrrrr you can just install the last RC prior to the official service pack and get 90% of the pack without threatening your hacked install.

    Not condoning it, just saying that it is hardly difficult to keep your install running if it is pirated..
     
  17. Pzykotik

    Pzykotik Guest

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    That doesn't make sense... If the other dude has the same motherboard as you and doesn't get the problem you're getting then you either have a defective motherboard or you're doing something wrong.

    And moab600, STFU already... This thread's about SP1 NOT another place for misguided people to go on about how Vista "isn't as good as Xp so they're not going to use it"
     
  18. Hyvry1

    Hyvry1 Maha Guru

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    It is not just a motherboard that can cause issues. If it is hardware it is normally a combination of certain hardware.

    Although software issues may have occured. This may be faulty drivers, drivers that are not upto date or even a corrupted file somewhere.

    A clean install of Vista may help remove software issues and use the latest drivers.
     
  19. Pzykotik

    Pzykotik Guest

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    Good point Hyvry1, either way... I'm really looking forward to SP1 =D lol
     
  20. moab600

    moab600 Ancient Guru

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    You got me wrong, i do want that SP1 for vista will cause it to be much better than XP, however i don't want Vista to be equal performance to XP, i want much better performance as promised and only i've seen is the opposite of it.
     

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