Windows Vista ServicePack1

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Vista Vista Upgrades….

The new vista service pack announced for some time now .. Now is actually ready and I had it in my winodows update list….

If you want to download the standalone package go : x64 | x86

Things to know before you download Windows Vista SP1

Published: March 18, 2008

  • Windows Vista SP1 is available in English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese. Other languages will be made available soon.
  • Microsoft strongly recommends using Windows Update to download and install Windows Vista SP1 on single PCs:
    • The download size from Windows Update of Windows Vista SP1 for x86 is 65 MB (compared to 450 MB from the Microsoft Download Center).
    • The download size from Windows Update of Windows Vista SP1 for x64 is 125 MB (compared to 745 MB from the Microsoft Download Center).
    • Windows Update will recognize PCs with known problematic drivers and postpone downloading Windows Vista SP1 until the PC has updated drivers or other applicable updates. Using Windows Update will help ensure you have the most trouble-free update experience possible.
    • Some Windows Vista users may encounter an issue with a small set of hardware devices that may not function properly after updating a Windows Vista PC to Windows Vista SP1. This is an issue with the way the device drivers were re-installed during the Windows Vista SP1 update process, not with the drivers themselves—these drivers worked on Windows Vista RTM and they work on Windows Vista SP1. This problem is typically corrected by simply uninstalling and reinstalling the driver. We are working with the manufacturers of these devices to get the known problematic drivers and their install programs updated, and also on other solutions we can use to ensure a smooth customer experience when updating to Windows Vista SP1 using Windows Update. For new PCs provisioned with Windows Vista SP1, this is not an issue.
  • If you choose to install Windows Vista SP1 via the standalone installer available on the Microsoft Download Center, Microsoft advises that you first visit Windows Update and install all optional drivers. Read Knowledge Base Articles 948187 and 948343 for more information.
  • If you have a prior version of the Windows Vista SP1 beta installed, you must uninstall it prior to installing the final version. Use the Control Panel applet “Programs and Features” and select “View installed updates” from the top left of the task pane. Under Windows, look for “Service Pack for Windows (KB936330).

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Desktop Administration and Management

Allows users and administrators to control which volumes the disk defragmenter runs on.
• Allows users and administrators using Network Diagnostics to solve the most common file sharing problems, not just network connection problems.
• Enables polling of RMS server at regular intervals to identify new templates and download them to the local template store. Previously these templates were pushed to clients via a combination of Group Policy and scripting. Additionally SP1 provides an API for applications to query and access template in the template store.
• Windows Vista SP1 includes a new Security Policy (UAC: Allow UAccess), which allows applications to prompt for elevation without using the secure desktop. This allows a remote helper to enter administrative credentials during a Remote Assistance session.
• Allows administrators to configure NAP Clients to:

• Receive updates from Windows Update or Microsoft Update, in addition to WSUS (Windows Server Update Services), as is the case for Windows Vista today.
• Define the time a client has to retrieve and submit Statements of Health. This allows the NAP client to respond in time when a particular connection has a timeout requirement.
• Use DNS server records to discover health registration authority (HRA) servers when there are no HRA’s configured through local configuration or group policy.
• Allow healthy clients used by the Help Desk to establish IPSec connections to unhealthy machines to help resolve problems. This improves the supportability of NAP by allowing Help Desk technicians with health compliant machines to establish connections (e.g. remote desktop, file share) to help resolve issues.
• Allows administrators to add a WSD (Web Services for Devices) Print Device to remote Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 machines. This can be accomplished by using the Print Management Console.
• Allows the administrators to use a new admin flag to allow WMI scripted enumeration of all contents in the CSC cache. This will enhance WMI scripted administration for offline folders in Windows Vista. Previously this was available only through the COM API.
• Improves printing to local printers from within a Terminal Server session.
• Allows users to rename or delete folders while working offline with redirected folders. This functionality is important to users that use Folder Redirection and work in offline mode for extended periods of time. This functionality is disabled by default but can be enabled by enabling a registry setting.
• Enhances the existing Vista EAPHost service by including an EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) Certification Program (ECP) Detection Mechanism. This mechanism makes delivery of EAP Methods submitted to the ECP available through Windows Update.
• 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.
• Allows an administrator to configure properties of a network, such as the name, and deploy it network-wide via a Group Policy snap-in.
• Allows KMS (Key Management Service) to run within a Virtual Machine environment.

Support for New Technologies and Standards

• 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.
• Adds the NIST SP 800-90 Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC) pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) to the list of available PRNG in Windows Vista.
• 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.
• Adds full support for the latest IEEE draft of 802.11n wireless networking.
• Adds support for obtaining identity and invoke identity UI from an inner method via a new EAPHost runtime API as well as a configuration UI for tunnel methods. These APIs are useful for developers working on tunneling/multi-phased EAP authentication methods as well as those who implement networking supplicants which consume EAP authentications.
• Adds support for Windows Smartcard Framework to enable compliance with the EU Digital Signature Directive and National ID / eID.
• Adds support for the Parental Controls Games Restrictions for ratings from the Korean Game Rating Board (GRB).
• Enhances TCP Chimney network card support so that a TCP Chimney network card can also support Compound TCP.
• Adds support in the Wireless Client for a new FIPS (Federal Information Processing) compliant mode. This mode is FIPS 140-2 compliant because it moves the cryptographic processing from the wireless network card to an existing FIPS-approved cryptographic library.
• Enhances Windows Firewall and IPsec to use the new cryptographic algorithms that are Suite B compliant.
• Updated drivers are delivered primarily via Windows Update and directly from hardware vendors, not as part of a service pack. However, a small number of critical drivers are included as part of Windows Vista (e.g., display drivers, audio drivers) and some of these have been updated.

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.

• Improves the performance of browsing network file shares by consuming less bandwidth.
• Improves power consumption when the display is not changing by allowing the processor to remain in its sleep state which consumes less energy.
• Addresses the problem of the Video chipset (VSync interrupt) not allowing the system to stay asleep.
• 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.
• Improves the speed of adding and extracting files to and from a compressed (zipped) folder.
• Significantly improves the speed of moving a directory with many files underneath.
• Improves performance while copying files using BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service).
• Improves performance over Windows Vista’s current performance across the following scenarios:

• 25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine
• 45% faster when copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system
• 50% faster when copying files from a remote SP1 system to a local SP1 system
• Improves responsiveness when doing many kinds of file or media manipulations. For example, with Windows Vista today, copying files after deleting a different set of files can make the copy operation take longer than needed. In SP1, the file copy time is the same as if no files were initially deleted.
• Improves the copy progress estimation when copying files within Windows Explorer to about two seconds.
• Improves the time to read large images by approximately 50%.
• Improves IE performance on certain Jscript intensive websites, bringing performance in line with previous IE releases.
• Addresses a problem that caused a delay of up to 5 minutes after boot with specific ReadyDrive capable hard drives.
• Improves the effectiveness of a Windows ReadyBoost™ device in reducing the time to resume from standby and hibernate by increasing the amount of data stored in the ReadyBoost device that can be used during a resume cycle.
• Includes improvements to Windows Superfetch™ that help to further improve resume times, in many environments.
• In specific scenarios, SP1 reduces the shutdown time by a few seconds by improving the Windows Vista utility designed to sync a mobile device.
• Improves the time to resume from standby for a certain class of USB Hubs by approximately 18%.
• Improves network connection scenarios by updating the logic that auto selects which network interface to use (e.g., should a laptop use wireless or wired networking when both are available).
• 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.
• Reduces the time it takes to return to the user’s session when using the Photo screensaver, making it comparable to other screensavers.
• Removes the delay that sometimes occurs when a user unlocks their PC.
• Improves overall media performance by reducing many glitches.
• In SP1, PC administrators are able to modify the network throttling index value for the MMCSS (Multimedia Class Scheduling Service), allowing them to determine the appropriate balance between network performance and audio/video playback quality.
• Windows Vista SP1 includes a new compression algorithm for the RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) that helps reduce network bandwidth required to send bitmaps or images via RDP. The compression, which can be selected by administrators via Group Policy settings, is transparent to all RDP traffic, and typically reduces the size of the RDP stream by as much as 25-60%, based on preliminary test results.
• The Windows Vista SP1 install process clears the user-specific data that is used by Windows to optimize performance, which may make the system feel less responsive immediately after install. As the customer uses their SP1 PC, the system will be retrained over the course of a few hours or days and will return to the previous level of responsiveness.
• SP1 addresses a number of customer performance concerns with new print driver technologies, including XPS-based printing.

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.
• 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.
• 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.
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One thought on “Windows Vista ServicePack1”

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