Windows Vista Service Pack 1/Windows Server 2008

Discuss it here (if you have it/will have it/want it).


Download SP1 using this hack. It adds a registry key to the registry in order to be able to download it via Windows Update.


And this is the link to download an image (.img) of the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 DVD (including both x86 and x64 versions). The link has been published on BetaNews and it's from the Microsoft OEM site. It does not require registration. However, the link has been removed by Microsoft until the 22nd of February. If you can wait until that day, fine, if not use the first link I've posted above.


The RTM build number is 6001.18000.rtm.080118-1840 (confirmed).

Microsoft released the following documents:
-"Overview of Windows Vista SP1";
-"Notable changes in Windows Vista SP1";

-"Windows Server 2008: Release Notes and Installation Information".
The documents can be downloaded here.


Notable changes (from the second document):

HARDWARE ECOSYSTEM 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 the 64-bit version of MSDASQL, which acts as a “bridge” from OLEDB to a variety of ODBC drivers thus simplifying application migration from 32-bit platforms to 64-bit Windows Vista.

· 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.

· 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.

· Enhances Netproj.exe to temporarily resize the desktop to accommodate custom projector resolutions when connecting to Windows Network Projectors.

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 helping ensure that all Neighbor Discovery RFC traffic is IPsec exempted.

· Improves certain problem scenarios where a driver goes to sleep with incomplete packet transmissions by helping ensure 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.

· 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.

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 scenarios1:
o 25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine
o 45% faster when copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system
o 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

· 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.

There are many more, but I guess this is enough (not even half of it though). I have to say that I don't hear the HDD spinning at all at the moment. I've enabled SuperFetch and the HDD is still silent.

 

i tried the sp1 beta for vista and there's some bugs i encountered.

 

Delete your post. Read the title of the thread.

 

??

 

Vista SP1 will be released on 02/04/08 might have some truth to it.
i find this on microsoft web site
release note for the vista SP1 which was put there on 02/04/08.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...f5-f366-4ad2-ba10-6a7d209de7bd&DisplayLang=en

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/Browse.aspx?DisplayLang=en&nr=20&categoryid=7&sortCriteria=date

 

I know this information is public knowledge but here is the official press release from Microsoft about the RTM of vista SP1 and server2008.

It seems we won't be able to get vista SP1 till sometime in march however as Volume Licensing customers are "first in line".

 

yup, they released SP1 to manufacturers only today. Customers can get it via Windows Update in March

 

Uhg!

unfair!

After all that hype and expectation!

Grrr!

*throws her hands up in the air and growls*

 

I hope someone somehow provides us to the SP1 version that is released to manufacturers.

 

Either you all can't read or can't read. The thread's title has nothing to do with betas or the release date (which isn't today, but RTM is today). Any other thoughts related to previous releases haven't got their place here. Stop posting other stuff.

 

Whats the point of this thread? Theres already been a ton of sp1 threads, and if people cant talk about about the beta or when its going to be released. All they can talk about is the final version which is going to be the same as the one already released.

 

Probably the RTM is build 18000 (which some people already have). My point was that a discussion about previous builds is useless, since it woun't have any effect on the final one. This is a thread about the final build for SP1 and WS08, not about how people had problems with previous builds.

 

well none of us know what u mean because of course we want the final build of vista sp1. and i have not tried the server 08

 

Then this thread is posted about a month early, pretty much no one on the forum will have the final Vista SP1 unless they purchase a OEM laptop/desktop, after today. If you forbid the discussion of beta/RCs/and release date of the SP1, then there is nothing to talk about!

 

Actually there is, because I have somewhat realized that the final build (RTM) might actually be the 18000 build, which I currently have. The number might sound right, the version number on the desktop is gone, the beta is gone from My Computer's properties and it just says SP1. It can be downloaded through a hack. Heck, even the EULA says it's the RTL (Retail) version. Might I be right?

 

ok now we are talking why did you not say this before

 

Because I'm still not sure that is it.

 

on your desktop does it say evaluation copy

 

No this is not true. So why are you talking about windows server 2008 here?.

 

Like I said, no.
In a few hours I'll get my favorite: Windows Server 2008 RTM .
coolguy, say what?

 

I won't be getting 2008 till the 27th :-(

 

I woun't be getting it 'till morning ('cause I am going to sleep tonight, not wait for the download to finish, burn the disk and install). I'm still thinking if I should install Enterprise or Datacenter.

 

I can't wait for SP1.

What would you guys recommend...

Doing a fresh OS install, then apply SP1, or just apply SP1 as is?

 

When a SP is released I usually install a slipstreamed copy or do a clean install and then apply the SP.
I will install Windows Server 2008 when I'm gonna wake up (after a good night sleep) and tell you if the build I have previously posted is the real SP RTM build.

 

what's the difference for fresh install vista+SP1 or install SP1 on the existing vista?

 

Well, first of all you have a winsxs folder in the Windows installation directory. Let's just say that it gets so big (I had around 15GB of wasted space there) and you can't delete any of what's inside. I currently have 8.8GB there. That can be avoided by using a slipstreamed version, which you currently can't have.
I like to not have any problems like registry issues and so on before installing it.
I don't think many people can answer this question precisely. Either way, some prefer to do a clean install (either by slipstreaming or by installing Vista, then SP1, then all the other stuff) for safety reasons. I usually like to do it using the slipstreaming method, because a service pack changes many things and don't want to be bothered afterwards trying to debug something.

 

I can confirm the build number of Windows Server 2008 to be 6.0.6001.18000. Also, this OS comes with a 60 day "trial" period. Also, SuperFetch is disabled in WS08.
Microsoft released the following documents:
-"Overview of Windows Vista SP1";
-"Notable changes in Windows Vista SP1";
-"Windows Server 2008: Release Notes and Installation Information".
They can be downloaded from here.

 

You can't slipstream Vista SP1 anyway, microsoft have already said that.

 

That is correct, but you can get a disk with SP1 included. I believe that Microsoft will do that (most lilkely build it from scratch).

 

And I guess that will be leaked to torrents after that heh?

 

Probably. Windows Server 2008 already is.

 

Of course. Eventually it will be available on store shelves.

 

At last! Vista Service Pack Final leaked!!!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=215965

 

No. That's not it.

 

WTF are you on? I want some of that! I can't make heads or tails of this, maybe its because I have a bad cold and am in bed typing on an EeePC downloading this, but I don't see anything about SP1, besides the fact that it supports it.

 

He's on Coca Cola...

 

This is not SP1.

 

So, I have normal Vista, how will I upgrade? Your all talking about 'slipstreaming' which I dont have a clue about lol. Will it not be possible to update through Windows Update?

Thanks, +1 REP to first good helper.

 

SP1 will update through Windows Update. It will be available for consumers in March.
Source1
Source2
Source3

EDIT: added more links

 

Thanks + 1 Rep.

 

It's been said before. It will be probably available earlier for download.

 

Is it a good idea to update to the latest SP1 build fade to black posted up first post or wait for the official WU release in march? I have used SP1 RC1 and it was faster than without SP1, file moving and copying is atrocious!

 

I think it is safe. I think Microsoft decided to send that build to RTM (since I have Windows Server 2008 and that version has the same build number).

 

I see, well i see the build number are similar, just wondering what is different to the one that MS are releasing through WU apart from it being just finalised, i will install the latest SP1 now and just reupdate to the official when it is out, thanks for the reply Fade to Black!

 

The build number is the same as with my Windows Server 2008 (RTM). I am not sure if you will need to update to the final build. Anyway, install it now, see if you like it, keep it if you like it, then maybe you install the public release (if needed).

 

The ram usage is notably higher from ranging of 43% to 50%, system transfer and copying files are alot quicker too, i think its worth keeping until any notable differences are found in the public SP1 since they are of the same build, thanks again FadeToBlack!

 

You're welcome. I can confirm the build number (it's on the main page) from a leaked RTM (and from my Windows Server 2008).

 

I believe it's been confirmed that the last refresh of SP1 (RC2) is the same build number as the RTM version. It was referenced by someone in THIS thread about a dev on the Connect boards confirming it. The actual quote is in the fourth post down on that page.

Currently running this particular build, and I haven't seen an problems since I've installed it. The OS overall is MUCH zippier in all respects thus far, especially in boot and shutdown times. FYI, I grabbed it off WU after doing the registry tweak to make it show up in the list.

 

I'm not sure why, but it doesn't have DirectX 10.1 as promissed.

 

Looks like it's not the final version then.