Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Expected Tomorrow

arcticstoat writes "After dishing out a few copies of the beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 to select customers in October, Microsoft has now decided to let the general public get their hands on the beta of the service pack, starting from tomorrow. The beta of the service pack will be made available via Microsoft's Customer Preview Program on 4 December, and it includes all the updates since Service Pack 1, as well as a few other bits and pieces. Most notably, Microsoft says that Service Pack 2 'improves performance for Wi-Fi connection after resuming from sleep mode,' and adds the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack, ID strings for VIA's Nano CPU and support for the exFAT file system for large flash devices."

Re:Stigma

[TClevenger]

This isn't "at release." It went to RTM a bit over 2 years ago (11/2006), and went to worldwide release two months later. There has already been a service pack. I recently installed the MS-recommended version of MSN for somebody on a brand new Alienware machine running Home Premium, and the included version of Windows Messenger, a userland app, send the machine into a bluescreen-equivalent reboot cycle, something that userland apps shouldn't be able to do. Recently, it has come to light that there's a vulnerability in the Vista-native "route" command that can crash the system, or worse, allow buffer overflow exploits. This is the safer, more reliable Windows?

Re:Fix the performance problems damnit!

[cowwoc2001]

CPU? Who cares about the CPU?!

I was complaining about I/O performance. It's so bad in Vista is drags *everything* down. Windows uses preemptive multitasking so different tasks gets fair access to the CPU. The same can't be said for the hard-drive. All it takes is one rogue process to take down the entire machine by loading like crazy from the HD.

Unfortunately for us, some of the built-in Vista services are exactly such rogue processes.

Take a look at Superfetch and the indexing service. Both are *way* too aggressive! The HD loads for 5-10 minutes on boot-up and anytime you change a file on your hard-drive from that point it will load 5x more than it did under XP.

Vista kills hard-drive performance. Hands down!

Re:Beta SP?

[Hafnia]

I do .... and i bet i'm not alone. My primary function as an engineer is keeping MRI and CT scanners running , i work for a private company with 40 employees. So our total IT staf is 1 full time Administrator and me. I do support and administration in an office of 15 people besides my real job. A lot of firms have this size and don't have the resources to micromanage PC's. Anyway ... we are still on XP and not even beginning to consider Vista , but we might consider Redmonds next offer - by that time i guess we have to phase out XP ... unfortunately !

Re:Nothing new for Media Center

[NJRoadfan]

Too bad the local cable company has started to encrypt all their QAM streams (outside the legally required OTA channels). No more watching your neighbor's on demand programming either.

Re:Stigma

[squallbsr]

Apparently there isn't enough Cheese In Colorado because my Vista machine does nothing BUT crash (Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10 run for months on end).

The longest uptime I got with Vista (Home Premium X64) was 8.5 days. Then an update installed, rebooted and I needed to do a DVD recovery to get it to boot again. It has managed to stay running for 4 hours before bedtime, I guess I'll see if it is still running when I get home...

SP1 and ICS

[k-macjapan]

Prior to SP1 I used ICS to share my connection with my PS3 from my laptops ethernet, due to the fact that wireless speeds from my PS3 are wretched even though my signal is 100%. After 'upgrading' to SP1 I found that the speeds from ICS were worse than the speeds I used to get using the wireless on my PS3.

I doubt SP2 will restore the connection to what it used to be...

Posting this on the off chance that anyone has a solution/work around for either fixing the PS3 wireless or the ICS issue.

Cheers
Kevin

Re:Fix the performance problems damnit!

[adolf]

While I've generally been a big fan of Superfetch and Readyboost, in concept, I can't stand them in practice.

It seems to me, during the 4 times that I've experienced a new Vista install (on three different PCs), that Superfetch really does help for the first few days: Common programs tend to start nearly instantaneously, and the OS seems to mediate disk access much like you suggest. After that, it gets slower and slower. Eventually, it gets so slow that booting and running the computer and starting programs with Superfetch turned off are all faster than keeping it on.

Please note I haven't put much effort into discovering the root cause, and am only reporting the symptoms that I've experienced. YMMV, etc.