DOJ Pushes Microsoft to Produce Vista SP1 in '07
It's unusual, but confirmation of the availability of Windows Vista's first service pack came not from Microsoft Corp., but from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 11:00 AM PDT

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,13...e/article.html

Updates:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&nc...054936&topic=t

This is good news, as is the roll-up SP3 for XP - I have been holding out migrating to Vista on my personal systems for Vista SP1. I wish it would come sooner, but as long as they get it right, I can wait.

Public test next week for Vista SP1

Microsoft on Tuesday said that it has reached the "release candidate" with the first service pack for Windows Vista, with plans to make the test software available publicly next week.

http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-982...ml?tag=newsmap

Reports have SP1 offering significant speed improvements and improved security. Direct3D 10.1 should be a real plus for hard-core gamers and improved battery life will make a difference for road-warriors. I still would not attempt to put Vista on an older machine, but I see little reason not to put Vista SP1 on any new system.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RC Public Availability Program

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RC is available through Windows Update. Experience the WU based Vista SP1 installation by following 4 simple steps.

Windows Vista SP1 RC distributed through Windows Update will be applicable to Windows Vista machines that are running on any of the 36 languages supported by Vista RTM.

If you already installed the Service Pack to your machine by using the standalone package, you must uninstall before you scan Windows Update for Windows Vista SP1.

Systems running on Windows Vista RTM require as many as three updates before SP1 can be installed. These updates are permanent to your Windows Vista systems. Windows Update will detect your system configuration and offer the prerequisite packages that are applicable to your system. For details, please see the instructions below.

File Name: SP1RC_Public_Availability_WURelease.exe
Version: 936330
Knowledge Base (KB) Articles: KB936330
Date Published: 12/11/2007
Language: English
Download Size: 348 KB
Estimated Download Time: 1 min 56K

Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...playlang=en&tm
Release notes: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=936330

Note: DO NOT install this program if you are NOT a tester or not ready to TEST Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RC. This product is intentend to users who want to test Windows Vista SP1 RC by installing it using Windows Update.

Vista SP1 is Complete, Update Available in March

Windows Vista Service Pack One is ready to ship, Microsoft says. PC manufacturers and consumers can expect the update in March. Microsoft has said that SP1 includes Vista OS improvements including reliability, security and performance. For a first look at those improvements read PC World's review of beta SP1.

Unlike some of the reports and speculation from last week, Vista SP1 is not officially available today. Microsoft said that it will be available to new volume licensing customers beginning March 1. Existing Vista consumers will have to wait until mid-March, Microsoft says, when the download becomes available through Microsoft's Windows Update Web site. Windows Vista users who have their systems configured to receive automatic updates will get SP1 automatically delivered in mid-April, Microsoft says.

One small catch is that Microsoft will not offer the update to a small subset of Vista PCs that have been found to have "problematic" device drivers. Those drivers, Microsoft says, were not installed properly initially and when Vista SP1 is installed OS problems ensue. For those systems, "if Windows Update determines that the system has one of the drivers we know to be problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1," according to the Windows Vista Team Blog.

MARCH?! I was expecting it in the next couple of days...

Analysis: Driver problems still haunting Vista
Why Service Pack 1 isn't in your hands yet

February 5, 2008 When Steve Sinchak's new Intel network card became "really slow" after upgrading his Windows Vista PC with a pre-release version of Service Pack 1, he tried uninstalling its software driver and replacing it with a new one.

But to his dismay, the Chicago-area technology author and blogger found himself "stuck in a loop" during the InstallShield-managed process -- unable to replace his sluggish older driver with a new, peppier one.

"It's messed up to the point where I may have to use brute force to uninstall the driver, or wipe my hard drive and reinstall Windows Vista completely," he said.

Sinchak's is an example, admittedly an extreme one, of the driver problems that forced Microsoft to take the unusual step of holding SP1's availability to users until March even while announcing its release to manufacturing (RTM) on Monday.

Not even the hundreds of thousands of people who have already been testing Vista SP1, nor the many Windows developers accustomed to being able to download software on Microsoft's MSDN or TechNet Web sites immediately after RTM, will be able to get SP1 for another 6-8 weeks.

And if you are one of the unlucky Vista users using a driver known to break and need reinstallation after the upgrade to SP1, Windows Update will quarantine you from getting SP1 until the driver is fixed.

"We want all of our customers to have the same good experience," said Microsoft senior product manager, David Zipkin, in an interview Monday. "That's why we're erring on the side of caution."

This is just one person out of millions that had a network card problem with a beta copy of Windows. Network card??? How many new computers and motherboards lack integrated network support? Good to see he's using a new card from a name brand, but how old is the computer it's going in? Surely it was built to support XP, which was designed to support Windows98, which was designed to support Windows 95, which ran on top of DOS. At best, anything more than a year or two old was designed to support XP, and not Vista. And this is a beta - things happen in beta.

Since he has his MVP in the same category as me, I would like to assume he knows his way around computers. So I was glad to see he updated his article after a simple driver uninstall/reinstall fixed the problem, making a point of saying,

I am not sure what caused the install to break, but I do not believe it is related to SP1.

I would like to see a quality, unbiased, survey of Vista users and divide them into two camps;

Group 1 - Upgraded from XP on XP era hardware
Group 2 - Clean OS install on new, current technology hardware

Then see who is having the most driver issues.

I note the following from the ComputerWorld link above:

If SP1 makes even small changes to Vista's security model, that could cause drivers to break again, according to Ian Lao, an analyst at In-Stat Inc. Why? For one, most vendors took the easier, less rigorous option of patching and modifying their drivers to make them Vista compatible, rather than "rewriting them from the ground-up," said Lao. That makes them more fragile.

I agree with this 100%. Microsoft published Vista standards long before Vista came out. And so if any changes are needed for SP1, they should be minor.

The fact that some LAN (or graphics, or whatever) cards work, and some don't, and all are written to the same Microsoft published "standards", indicates to me that some hardware makers got it together, others don't. I must note at this point that this just illustrates the need to buy quality parts from name-brand makers, for you tend to get what you pay for in the digital world.

Bottom line: Your old computer is an XP machine. If you want a Vista machine, build or buy a new one, with hardware built to support tomorrow, not yesterday.

If you need a new computer, hold off until Vista SP1 is preinstalled and on the store shelves. The big Internet makers (Dell, etc.) will be quick because they image their drives shortly before they leave the factory and the image can be updated fairly easily.

PCs out in the retail channels may sit in warehouses or on shelves without SP1 for some time - so check before buying.

If you build your own, start researching for current technology parts (and sales!) now. The good news is current technology is also much more efficient, so your new Vista machine will be more powerful, faster, run cooler/generate less heat, and consume less energy than your old XP machine.