Vista SP1 Guides for IT Professionals Released

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."

2GB+ Installation fix?

[Anonymous Coward]

The number one thing Vista should fix, and I didn't see it on the list (I could have missed it), is including the fix that will allow machines to install Vista with over 2GB of memory. It is pretty silly that one of the huge benefits of using a 64-bit OS is the ability to have over 4GB of RAM, but Vista has a problem with that.

Vista bashing aside, who would want to install any OS first by REMOVING some of their RAM, installing the OS, applying a patch/fix, then adding back the RAM. What a hassle!

Re:I have Vista SP1 RC installed

[rucs_hack]

Me too. Copying from my vista machine to the other machines I own was horrificly slow. I'm somewhat concerned that they got a 45% improvement in copying to a non vista machine with the first service pack though. It doesn't speak well for their quality control if a flagship product gets released with that level of error.

I wonder if they've just quietly disabled some of that stupid drm stuff.

Support Blender and Ogre3D!

[headkase]

Bucking the slant around here, I bought Vista the very same day that SP1 RC1 became available exactly because of that. In a short while SP1 will be final and Vista will get incrementally better. It's been a pleasant experience for me so far, all of my software works but about 1 in 15 needs to have XP compatibility checked. UAC doesn't annoy me very often as well - maybe that's because I don't go into OS configuration screens or run XP ticked programs all that often. Now, with all that said: the day Linux runs all my games and all games are released for Linux is the day I say: "Vista? Yeah I used to use that.". Linux has everything but entertainment and for me entertainment is the primary use of my computer.

SP1 includes stability fixes for bios hacks!

[BitZtream]

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.

Funny ... I don't seem to remember the bios hacks or grace period resets causing stability issues that weren't there already. I'm sure glad they are going to fix them and release them without giving the rest of us a chance to know they are safe to deploy.

Atleast it'll give the 31337 hax0rs something new to work around, keeps them off the streets, prolly requires more drugs though.

I'm glad to see so many issues being resolved...

[SirLurksAlot]

even though they're issues which shouldn't have been issues to begin with. I mean, come on!:

(From the list of changes):

Allows users and administrators to control which volumes the disk defragmenter runs on.

and

Improves the copy progress estimation when copying files within Windows Explorer to about two seconds.

Why in the world was defrag set to not give the user a choice on what drive it ran on? Also, why should defrag take an admin password to run??? And why the hell did it ever take longer than 2 seconds to estimate how long it would take to copy files? These are the kind of things that should never have been problems to begin with, and they're indicative of so much of what's wrong with Vista. I got Vista Home Premium with my new PC just to check it out and see what I thought, and I've seriously considered wiping it and installing XP several times. I'll probably wait for SP1 though, which I guess makes me a masochist at this point.

So long, Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using vista almost for a year now. At first, I was quite happy about it, it is supposed to have exiting new features like IO priority, readyboost, superfetch and all that. And I liked Aero at first. And better security (I must say, I like UAC, it's really no greater pain than sudo).

But it's SLOW. And while I could live with that, I just couldn't stand it hijacking my desktop. How many times did the system start doing some heavy disk IO, without ANY option to stop it. Even task manager didn't respond so I could check what was going on.

As time passed, I upgraded from a 3 year old laptop to a new one (Acer 5920G, a fine machine I must say). The only problem is, Vista is not any faster than on a 3 year old system!? Wtf??

So, the other day I was doing some linux stuff and installed Ubuntu to an external USB disk.

OH MY GOD (spoken in that-lady's-voice-from-friends-series).

It's fast. It's nice. And it's fast. And it uses only so little of my 2 gb ram. And did I tell you it was fast? Oh, and file copy is a snap!

So I've been using it for a week or so and I love it. But then... yesterday I came across this "compiz fussion" thing.

OH MY FSCUKING GOD THAT'S AWESOME!

So guess what. About an hour ago I've "cp -a /dev/sdb1 /dev/sda1". Yup. Vista no more (well, it is saved as an image on external drive, just in case).

I do a lot of .Net programming and I've set up a vmware XP box for development and virtualized XP is waaayyy faster than vista ever was.

Since SP1 doesn't solve any performance issues, I probably won't use that beast ever again. When I have to use Windows, I'll use XP.

So... Is Linux winning the desktop in 2008?

Totally!

Re:I have Vista SP1 RC installed

[ashridah]

Let's be clear about this. Copying from disk to disk is a different bottleneck than copying over the network. Network copies are affected by the media playback QoS, AND the relative chattiness of SMB2 (the new version of the CIFS protocol that vista likes to use if it can). Media playback will put an emphasis on prioritising access to media so that it can keep the buffers as full as possible when the QoS service is active (i don't recall what it's called, sorry,) and SMB2 just uses a shitload more packets (and thus, more latency, particularly on busy networks) than SMB1 did.

The DRM components may well be having an effect as well, but it's not the only thing.

ash

Re:Specific scenarios?

[ccguy]

The move operation itself might be as simple as that. The problem is that vista has a tendency to open files for no good reason. For example you can flag 40 files, press shift-del to delete them forever, and have the operation fail because one of the was opened by explorer to display a thumbnail. It's really hard to believe that MS can't put a couple of interns to work on explorer and get rid of these incredible annoying things forever. Or fuck, buy someone else's replacement.

Re:Specific scenarios?

[ccguy]

It's not Explorer's fault. From what I recall, you can't delete a file off an NTFS volume if a program has opened it with exclusive (ie not shared) access.

How it's not Explorer's fault if it's explorer the program that opens the file I just told to delete? If it really really needs to open it so it can show a thumbnail or display the dimensions etc for a few milliseconds before it's deleted, at least it should implement a 'panic close', or 'delete queue', or any other dumb solution they can come up with... anything is better than displaying an error message saying that the file is open (which it's not true by the time the message comes up, btw).

While they are at it, they could ALSO try to not to cancel long operations just because of an error in a specific file...i.e. copy 500 files from one place to another, file number 219 fails and the operation is cancelled? 218 files copied, 287 files that COULD have been copied not copied, WTF?

Ah, and a final suggestion... if the user asks to copy 50 Gb to a drive with 40 Gb free space, fucking start doing it if the users really wants to, instead of completely refusing to even try...you don't know if the remote is making space at the same time, or compressing, or just reporting an invalid free space number for whatever reason.

OK, just needed to vent a little :-) Feel free to defend explorer at any time.

Re:Specific scenarios?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Thats why I wrote my own copy program for windows. It copies and or moves each file individually, taking into account exactly what I intended it to do if the operation failed. Sure it *might* take a little longer, but I only use it in cases where I'm copying/moving hundreds of files and don't want to stand in from on the computer for the entire operation.

Re:Failed to include the upgrade to Ubuntu button

[bigstrat2003]

Not at all. It's my idea of a rant. I've gotten sick and tired of hearing the idiots who feel the need to bash Vista at every opportunity, and karma be damned, it felt good to vent steam.

Re:This is the sensible discussion

[causality]

If this is intelligent discussion, then so is goatse. Bashing Vista isn't intelligent discussion, it's trolling, when it occurs in the context of a story about SP1. Intelligent discussion would be the merits/demerits of SP1, not saying "lolz people need an upgrade to Ubuntu button".

I can't tell which is less intelligent - expressing an honest opinion about Vista without ever representing it as factual or intelligent, or what you are doing which is 1) coming to Slashdot expecting information that is better obtained via Google and 2) getting all pissy because people (who owe you nothing) won't behave the way you want them to.

If you really want to change the nature of the discussion, how about posting your own review of the advantages and disadvantages of SP1 instead of saying "lolz people need to post the way I want them to".

Re:Specific scenarios?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great. But it leaves me wondering why something so fundamental as copying files took 3 versions and several OS releases to finally get it right. It's bizarre.

It drives me *nuts* when I'm trying to delete or move files and realize one is open in some program, or when it isn't open, but there's some file handle dangling somewhere even after the relevant program is closed (Windows XP is sometimes insanely slow letting go of them). On OS X or Linux machines the delete or move proceeds unabated. Heck, in most cases a move doesn't even affect the opened file -- the program is notified of the filename change and usually updates itself to reflect the name change. Why is NTFS so finicky? Is this meant to be a feature to prevent users from accidentally deleting or moving active files, or is it an undesirable side effect?