Vista SP1 Guides for IT Professionals Released 270
wilkinism writes "Microsoft released several detailed documents explaining just about everything you ever wanted to know about Vista SP1. Highlights include a Deployment Guide, list of included hotfixes, and a 17-page list of 'Notable Changes'. In reviewing the Notable Changes document, it seems the company focused on improving reliability & performance in really specific scenarios, so it's no wonder that most reviewers are reporting no noticeable gains."
I have Vista SP1 RC installed (Score:5, Informative)
Disable indexing, restore point, and shadow volume (Score:5, Informative)
With all these things going on the disk access will slow down considerable and no service pack will fix it. Most users dont care and just want their system to work so this is why its enabled by VISTA by default.
Cliffs' Notes (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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.
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 power consumption when the display is not changing by allowing the processor to remain in its sleep state which consumes less energy.
Significantly improves the speed of moving a directory with many files underneath.
Improves performance over Windows Vista's current performance across the following scenarios1:
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
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 time to read large images by approximately 50%.
Improves IE performance on certain Jscript intensive websites, bringing performance in line with previous IE releases.
Allows users and administrators using Network Diagnostics to solve the most common file sharing problems, not just network connection problems.
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. 3rd 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.
Re:Not to be redundant (Score:5, Informative)
When does SP1 come out?! I cant take it anymore (Score:3, Informative)
I hope Canon gets the big aids dick.
I like Vista in general. Yes it is slow, but there are some nice things about it. SOME.
I've been debating on going back to XP64, but i cant until i know for sure that Vista SP1 is a disaster.
I need SP1 to come out soon because i really need to know if it will actually improve Vista64, back to XP64 quality levels.
The sooner it comes out, the quicker i can decide whether or not to go back to XP64... printer be damned.
Vista shipped with a serious bug (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Specific scenarios? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Specific scenarios? (Score:2, Informative)
That happens with Windows XP (and yes it's really stupid and should have been fixed in a Service Pack) But they actually fixed it in Vista. With Vista if you are copying, moving, deleting. whatever, more than one file and an error occurs, you can skip that file and keep going. One of the few things they actually got right in Vista.
Well, sort of.
Unfortunately you still end up with the problem of selecting a few hundred files to copy, leaving, and when you come back your computer is sitting there waiting for your input in a dialog box because an error occurred with file number 11.
Moderation games (Score:2, Informative)
Actually I'm enjoying myself today. One comment is "Insightful troll" and one is "Interesting flamebait".
Although the post reads like a troll, I was quite serious -- Thus far every Vista install I've seen lasted no more than a month. Some went back to XP, a couple decided as long as they'd made a change they might as well try something else before going back to XP... And that makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, you wiped XP and installed Vista hoping for something better didn't you? Why give up after just one FAIL ?
A Vista /. thread is always going to be about axe grinding and nothing else. This is true both for the posts and for the moderation. For helpful discussion you would probably want a different forum [cnet.com]. There you'll find helpful posts like this one [cnet.com].
Or you can read this helpful post [cnet.com] about downgrading from Vista to XP. Personally I like the thread entitled "Windows Vista: Vista iTunes Video Playback Blame Game [cnet.com].
Here on /. this is what you get and that's the way it is.
Re:Specific scenarios? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Cliffs' Notes (Score:5, Informative)
As an IT professional, I would like to highlight a few additional items (please do bear with me, a point should follow :-)
Reading the list in another way: this means that with Vista SP1, Windows users will now have modern, cutting edge features such as:
Et cetera... in other words -- I had no clue that Vista was this badly broken to begin with. Data loss when ejecting removable NTFS volumes? Doesn't know which network interface to use? Cannot encrypt other than the system drive? Cannot backup encrypted drives? 2GB RAM limit? WTF?!?!
Boggles the mind, quite frankly... If I'd had any of the abovementioned issues in my current home/work machine line-up, I'd had probably found a new system vendor very quickly. I'm constantly moving between a number of 802.11n and g and wired networks, both infra and ad-hoc, often multi-homed, with 2 or 3 virtual machines running various Linux versions, alongside MS Word and Powerpoint, on encrypted disks both internal and removable, and yes backups are critical as this is business use. (Although we know how to make all this happen also in Linux or BSD, having things just work was why me and most of our company has moved to macs...)
Just amazing.
*) 50% figure by NOOMA**, ******) Based on wording "improved success rate" taken to imply a significant*** failure rate.
***) Significant = double-digit percentage figure.
****) NOOMA = Numbers Out Of My Ass.
Yeah, that's about it. (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I would say "it does not work" is a fairly significant issue for most people. They don't care why all this software [iexbeta.com] won't work including Novell Client, Brio Intelligence Explorer, SecondLife Client, Crystal Reports, Microsoft SQL Server (both 2005 and 2007) and the myriad apps that require that. They don't care why all this hardware [iexbeta.com] won't work including VIA KT400 chipset with radeon graphics controller, many popular tv tuner cards and nearly all Adaptec RAID controllers.
What they care about is that it is their computer and they want it to do stuff that Vista won't do. There are enough problems that they're not corner cases - they are the main stream. For goodness sake how does Microsoft make an OS incompatible with any flavor of Intel NIC? Who doesn't save files from a share to a pendrive, or upload pictures from their camera? Don't you think a normal person would want that to happen in under a month? iTunes? It won't work with iTunes? You don't think people are going to consider that a deliberate failure? Or a fatal flaw?
That's it. "It won't do what I must have my computer do" is the dealbreaker for everybody I've seen use it so far.
Re:Not to be redundant (Score:4, Informative)
You can boot memtest86 from USB stick.
Re:First page (Score:5, Informative)
I said to myself: look, Microsoft is evil and Vista is a POS according to many reports- but you have it with your new lappy, keep it for compatibility tests with the other POS explorer. Just dual boot. You already multibooted two macs, three intel laptops and an old alphaserver.
Ok. Let's try.
Booted vista, made backup dvds. Looked around. Ok Vista seems to suck. Slow, and every desktop is different from the others, due to personalization by laptop manufactured, so it's the usual popup galore plus new widgets. Totally different from the macos -> osx transition, which was totally smooth, except for the fact that OSX till 10.2 was not even complete.
But I gotta repartition. Let's do it from vista, lest they did some FS trickery that linux installers do not yet know about.
oh three partitions? well at least data is separate. OUCH but it won't resize to more than 50%. Defrag. OUCH no defrag Data partitions only, defrags everything. STOP. defrag.exe from commandline after looking for the proper options. Just like that difficult to use OS called linux. Defragged. Still won't resize. I guess I must get to windows forums looking for answers, just like that other difficult OS? No way- But I'm not using only 20 out of 120gb of disk for my main OS. Let's do it from linux. Resized, cut some 60gb of free space between two partitions. The linux zealot in me thinks: "wanna see that vista won't tolerate even leaving free space in the middle of his partitions?" reboot. Indeed, the restore screen comes up.
That's it, vista goes. Kept in my house for two hours. Subtract one from vista install stats
Re:Specific scenarios? synctoy dude (Score:3, Informative)
SyncToy
SyncToy: the smart way to copy files, at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/synctoy.mspx [microsoft.com]
What Does SyncToy Do?
SyncToy synchronizes the files in folders of your choosing. It does so by copying, renaming, and deleting files.
What's So Special About SyncToy?
There are many ways to copy files in a Windows® environment. However, SyncToy is faster, easier to configure, more transparent, and easier to repeat than:
Using Drag and Drop from Windows Explorer,
Using Copy or XCopy from the command line,
Building batch files and/or scripts to automate file copy operations,
Using offline folders, or
Using Windows Briefcase.
How Does SyncToy Deliver These Benefits?
SyncToy helps you save time, minimize network usage, and save disk space by only copying when necessary.
The simple, fast, and familiar Windows interface lets you point and click to define your folders and the SyncToy actions you want performed on each folder pair. You choose the appropriate action when you create a folder pair, and the action determines how SyncToy handles file conflicts such as:
Files that have been renamed in both folders,
Files deleted from one folder and renamed in the other,
Files renamed in one folder and modified in the other, and
Many other file conflict situations.
SyncToy enables you to save how you want your folder pairs synced so you can sync again and again with a single click of a button.
SyncToy lets you sync a single pair of folders or all of your folder pairs with a single click. You can even set up SyncToy to run unattended .
The powerful preview feature in SyncToy shows you exactly what is going to happen before any files are touched. Preview even gives you a chance to unselect any proposed actions before you start.
Running service pack 1 now (Score:4, Informative)
We've been using vista 64 business for over a year (because if we didn't use it on our work desktops we wouldn't properly test it..eating your own dogfood..and all that) and in no short order we have experienced all sorts of fun issues. Just off the top of my head:
*unstable video drivers (crashes, black screens, etc. SP1 makes this worse)
*slow file i/o
*explorer is unresponsive (its just like on windows 98 when some program in the co-operative multitasking would flake out and take the system with it.. except command prompt windows continue to run just fine)
*the tiff viewer that comes with vista is broken. the solution from ms? use the office 2007 document viewer. Nevermind the "new improved" built-in fax stuff on vista.
*backup with vista has never worked (maybe in sp1 its ok?)
*attempting to uninstall sp1 rc1 resulted in bluescreening (whee)
*users that want to change the font or size run into Serious Issues with minor changes.. text cutoffs etc
*random window placement/size issues on multiple monitors
*people that like to use the keyboard in the default save/save as dialogue cause all sorts of weird issues if they hit arrow keys. google this one... its weird
*explorer isn't smart about huge files and generating previews.. big images cause explorer to hang which seems like the whole system
*have I mentioned horrible performance?
SP1 Vista Driver Crash and Slow File Copy [youtube.com] Whee.
At one point forums.nvidia.com had 110+ pages of people having driver issues in one thread. I can attest that things have not improved to xp-levels of stability in the past year.
I really, really hope Linux continues growing exponentially. Good windows app support on linux would be golden. I am super impressed by wine at this point.... so tempting.
The VM solution (Score:3, Informative)
You're on to something there. Here is a sample of XP running under Ubuntu [youtube.com]. It's stable, it can be secured. You can use all the free stuff that's a couple clicks away for all Linux users - an embarrassment of choices [ubuntu.com] actually. It supports all of your processors and memory. It's updated more often. It's more secure - and not in the context of "the most secure Windows ever" either. It doesn't have millions of malware applications. Drive-by installs are unheard of. The only anti-virus available is just in case you happen to be serving mail to vulnerable Windows clients.
All that and you can open up a copy of your base VM and if it gets exploited or its configuration goes haywire or something you can just delete it and open a new copy. If it crashes it doesn't take the computer with it. You can keep all the licensed software you paid so much for - and your XP software doesn't expire or phone home and it works with everything XP does except a few games - and fewer every week. Using Samba you can share work folders from the real computer to the VM so your precious data isn't hostage to your flaky Windows environment any more than it must be in order to use all those Microsoft Apps in the first place. Remember to store stuff you care about in portable formats.
Yeah, I like that plan. When you upgrade your computer you can just copy the VM over and it will run again just fine. When you realize you haven't used it in a long time because Windows is like, so last century you can just move it to offline storage and forget it - or move it to a server and remote in. Migration has never been this easy before.
And portable in ways that Windows never has been? How running XP on the PS3 [youtube.com] under linux grab you? It apparently grabbed the attention of 700,000 other people. Localization for the OS and apps on a scale Windows has never had and never will - the foreigners will like that.
And well, it looks nice [youtube.com] too. From the number of views on this one [youtube.com] I would say Vista users are suffering a little bling envy.
How is this not moving forward again?