Vista SP1 benefits remain a mystery

Download it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b0c7136d-5ebb-413b-89c9-cb3d06d12674&DisplayLang=en
or here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=874a414b-32b2-41cc-bd8b-d71eda5ec07c&DisplayLang=en for x64

Your looking for changes from RC (release candidate) wich is virtually final.. to RTM ?

Lets face it its called RC for a reason so there should not be much differences. They probably fixed some bugs wich would not let the SP install under certain circumstances.. 

stop the bashing its here (-: well almost atleast.. if you want to bash something its worth noting that the 30+ languages avalible, except the initial 5 released so far, will have to wait until mid-april to get the SP.

MS clearly states, with all SP1 BETA's and RC's that you need to uninstall them prior to installing a newer SP1 release. And its the same with the final release. So i dont know why you looked for SP1 in the first place with a RC version already installed... kinda common sense to uninstall it first really.

You can download SP1 from the MS website.

AT adds: What part of "it won't uninstall" are you missing?

I installed SP1 today. Nothing has changed. File copy is slow as heck, still need teracopy instead. Nothing is any faster that I can tell. Even COD4 plays worse now on DX 10 than it did before trying sp1. I simply see no noticable difference. I'm going back to XP cause Vista just sucks. That and Vista Ultimate x64 has a short and useless life span. What a waste.

You need to uninstall the old SP1 leave it for a while to regenerate the pre-SP1 files (an hour or two?) - they also provide a command to run to check if this is done.

AT adds: One more time - the uninstall FAILS

The only difference is the RC1 time stamp vs. that of the final.

You guys and your misleading titles. You install beta software that isn't meant for general use, regardless if it is feature final or not, and then complain about it?

Get a grip

Is not going to be available for another month . At least that is what I have seen around the net.

Downloading the whole whack in one file is another matter. 

Have you read this article: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=948343 - 8 issues about not showing vista sp1 in windows update, or maybe your problem is in some driver issue: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=948343#method5. Alternatively you can always try to manual download and install Vista SP1 from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B0C7136D-5EBB-413B-89C9-CB3D06D12674&displaylang=en

Best regards,
SK, blog.torli.pl

I've been running the official SP1 release since the 22nd of February. It came down off its shiny automatic-update rails just fine with the exception of it rolling back my video card drivers from beta 169.44s to the WHQL 169.25 (think I got those numbers right).

Anyhow, no apparent fixes jump at me post SP1 install since Vista x64 Ultimate had been running flawlessly for me from the getgo. Your mileage and BIAS may vary of course.

C

I'm just going to reinstall but th 64 bit version not the 32 bit - need it for the VM's...

I am sure you are well aware that 'F'ista is a PoC and 90% of the bloat is spy ware to snoop on users, as the noble Inq does not fail to state at least one more time per day than I am sick of hearing the whining.

With this advanced technology the 'Vole' identified any Inq affiliate to make their experience as miserable as possible so there is no shortage of slandering and bullshitting to keep the ad revenue rolling.

Now - do you have some news to tell or you just need a shoulder to cry on?

VISTA is a FAILURE

Its more like a nice Presentation than a good OS....
And SP1 is a very small improvement 

You will be disappointed if you expect to see major improvements by installing SP1

The only real reason to install Vista and SP1 is because of its DirectX 10.1 support...
Not that DX10 is anything revolutionary either compared to DX9 and the games that use DX10 do not really benefit much from it...

I have seen games going to the worse by enabling DX10 and will little graphic improvement compared to DX9

My advise is stick to Windows XP SP2 as long as it lasts...
There is no reason to install Vista unless if you are some "Rich-want the latest" PC geek 

I downloaded SP1 for a 2n time last night as it was available to download via Windowsupdate, guess what??? Upon restart my sons pc will not start again!!! This is the 2nd time i have attempted this, the 1st time being on initial release via windowsupdate, and the 2nd last night via Windowsupdate. Once again Microsoft release junk to all of us suckers. As a note for all this is SP1 being applied to Windows Vista Business, so all business customers beware...


AT adds: What part of "it won't uninstall" are you missing?

That about sums it up! Freakin classic.

why don't you erase and reinstall whole Windows, like all normal Windows users do. Everyone knows Microsoft SUCKS when you try uninstalling any of its products. Why do you use Vista again, in what way it is better than XP?

The author is just plain stupid. The inquirer has truly hit a new low.

I have a modest HTPC running Premium and SP1 broke the Media Center application. It will not start up at all, and claims there's a file missing

Way to go MS!

I guess I'll try MythTV now

From the lack of research or troubleshooting performed by the author of this article, I'm forced to assume we have a regular joe-user pretending to be a technical reporter here. I'm hoping this site isn't wasting any money to pay this lack of skill.

Complaining about PRE-RELEASE software messing up is plainly moronic. Did you even BOTHER to read the fine print before installing the RC of SP1? MS owes you nothing tech support wise. Maybe next time, you'll either wait to install the final release version OR install pre-release software to a non-mission critical machine that you can nuke and pave at will. This is why us REAL techs keep a crash and burn machine around.

I have benchmark vista Sp1 my self when the first RTM leak. It just good. All benchmark almost increase, unless the low level benchmark like sisoft. File copy is event more increase, espesially if you copy over the lan. Game also increase. Detail at http://www.ficforlife.com/2008/02/windows-vista-rtm-vs-windows-vista.html. So far no problem with Sp1, it very stable and good :) (my own experience)

Since when is it out for everybody?
One can download it with the proper manipulation of the registry, but it surely is not avalable for everyone.
As for the other "official" downloads floating around...They are mostly just relabeled RC1 versions, some bugs fixed with RC2 are not in it and RC is not identcal to RTM.

I wonder why the INQ leave those silly , useless comments in here. Some peoples are really retarded... It seem like some of them haven't even red the article before commenting or they just don't understand anything at all...

Back to the subject : I've had the same problem here, I can't uninstall the RC version that was installed back in november.. It would be hard to believe that Microsoft did not knew about this , since just about everyone who have installed a previous SP1 got the same problem.

And yes, File transfer is still very slow.. it look like Vista won't get any better than it is right now, useless bloatware.

someone said something about becoming a victim of Microsoft (marketing, was it?)...and altho i find that statement odd.....

well, just what if windows 3.0-2000 and don't forget NT (xp is debatable) hadn't been adopted so well? xp was the first real pig with lipstick. by then, we were locked in.

what if... ?

n00b! The Quake Engine does not even support DX10, it runs natively in DX9 and the performance of COD4 with SP1 has improved in testing to be better then XP...

SP1 does provide some performance benifits. Remember that the caches are cleared with the install and it takes a bit of time before you see the small performance benifits...

It *is* available on windows update - I installed it last night. It took bloody ages tho so I left it and took a quick peek this morning. Haven't had time to test anything though.

It's not offered on update if your PC has known problematic drivers etc though.

Complaining about problems with a release candidate is kinda like bitching about the prostitute that gave you the clap. You should've known what you were getting into before hand and taken precautions (i.e., image the disk or set a restore point). If you were counting on pre-release software behaving well on your system (installation, execution, restoration, whatever), then you kinda got what you deserve.

It *is* available on windows update - I installed it last night. It took bloody ages tho so I left it and took a quick peek this morning. Haven't had time to test anything though.

It's not offered on update if your PC has known problematic drivers etc though.

I've seen some of the early reports about Vista SP1 on other sites and they're showing a roughly 25% increase in speed in most gaming apps vs the original Vista, and about 5-10% over current hotfixed, non-SP Vista. Crysis at low res without AA is showing about a 100% speed increase - a doubling of the framerate. I'd call that pretty significant!

That pattern seems to hold for at least some non-gaming apps as well.

People like to bash Vista, maybe with some justification, but SP1 does seem to have done some good.

One of my bosses brought in his home Vista Dell PC to install Office03 (he had MS Works).

While I was doing some basic updates to to office install, the Windows Update flagged SP1 (about lunchtime GMT). I ran the update by itself. Download of about 69.2mb, restart, 100% 3/3. booted to windows fine.

Granted, I haven't noticed any enhancements, but I didn't have any trouble installing the SP either. Machine scores four point something on that performance rating thing if you ignore the 3.0 graphics ratings so it's not particularly old hardware.

I wonder if non-technician machines (i.e. machines which just run Word all day from the day they were unpacked) will have a better time with SP1 installs than hardened Inq test rigs (with ever changing hardware, software, and settings).

I installed the SP1 yesterday and everything seemed to be fine until I my screensaver came on; it couldn't load because of some "random error" so i simply selected a new screen saver and I forgot all about it...then i wanted to play music so I open up WMP (probably my first mistake of actually using it) and all of a sudden WMP cannot play any of my music, "WMP encountered a problem while playing back the file" error. Lovely...so I immediately decided to uninstall the service pack and now I wonder how long it will be until the vole forces me to install SP1 so i can install other updates. Way to go MS you just can't stop dumping lemons on us and idiots like me keep buying it. I feel ashamed.

Your problem with RC1 is annoying but hardly surprising. Not sure what to suggest...

My experience: SP1 (64 bit) took 48 minutes to install and needed one reboot. So far the only benefits I can see are in the speed of the file copy and it does not seem to randomly change my view when exploring files. 
Gaming performance seems about the same. I still need to do testing to see if anything else jumps out.

The only install problem I encountered is with my RealTek AC97 drive. It needed to be reinstalled before it started working. SP1 actually disabled the device to call attention to the problem which impressed me (just a little). I updated the driver and enabled the device an alls well again.


Soo, just finished up SP1 RC removal and reinstall with SP1 final. Took a while but all is well, copy faster, Media Center working fine. Sorry you are having problems. I guess I am a rocket scientist, not.

Don't trust uninstall. I installed SP1 last night as well on my DX10 gaming rig (the only reason I have Vista or MS) STALKER crashed the first time but ran OK the second. I have had not time to play with it since then but I did check my C: drive and the Defrag has changed slightly. I do know the old Far Cry ran like a pig under Vista (DX 9) and yes I installed the hot-fixes Nvidia said I should for my 8800 GTS 512 card.
OS X is where it is at baby, If Steve Jobs will just pull his arrogant head out of his ass he could freaking clean up right now.
I mean by games and the underpowered video choices that Apple gives for games, especially since Leopard incorporates Boot-camp.
I give EA games and John Carmack credit for porting games to the Unix/Linux/OS X platform.

You need to do a re-uninstall of that adventurous sort of chap!
You can thank me later,

After installing SP1 i have noticed my drivers got corrupted 

I reinstalled them and fortunately all work again now

BUT
I noticed that also some of my files to be missing :(

Can SP1 delete files during its installation ???

Damn you Microsoft !!!

I downloaded and installed SP1 and it works fine. No problem. Not much faster if at all.

Works great. All peripherals and work.

And I agree with the idea that someone who downloads a Rc or beta should expect to have to reimage their machine before going to the final version of any software. And for those who make changes to the OS without understanding what they are doing and then expecting things to work fine afterward.. you shouldn't do that.

"Shiny new" is ironically the least "shiny new" description in circulation.

Talk about a poverty of ideas and creative scope in language... Try getting yourself some "shiny new" adjectives and actually thinking for yourself rather than going for the cheap overused phrases that make you sound like a simpleton. Now there's a shiny new recommendation for you.

What do you expect you installed the RC version. Microsoft state that it should only be installed in a test environment and should NOT be installed in a live environment.

I have installed SP1 and have found a remarkable differance. SP1 makes VISTA 100% Better than XP!!!!

It installed without a hitch, 2 reboots later, Vista hung for the very first time on startup. My Jedi Academy still doesn't work, but data transfer from USB sticks is somewhat faster (as in "notable by humans"). Beyond that, I hope that there's more benefit to 400+ MB than that...

BUT to clarify, I had no choice with vista (HP Notebook, hardly any XP drivers available, Vista preinstalled) but have had hardly any real problems at all (Jedi Acadamy is the biggie)

I don't know about you people but after installing SP1, my system just seems to run better, Samba<->Vista file transfer has improved substantially. Also, it is worth noting that while file transfers locally aren't very much faster, they don't make my computer freeze anymore. All in all I think sp1 is a great package.

Also, I'd never go back to XP because I find Vista much more reliable as in less crashes, semi-intelligent debugging (for instance if I get a BSOD it automatically looks up the code from the database and suggests a fix) and also the feel. Perhaps the trouble is caused by pirated versions (which 50%+ of the users use) or maybe it's just that I don't use Aero (non-needed eyecandy).

I had to get a live person from the microsoft website to do some configurations to my pc.Then she had me uninstall mcAfee,go to Live update,then re-install.It worked.Then I reinstalled all my security stuff .If you want to go the route I did,it should work.She also sent me instructions on how to install manually.Email me and I'll pass on the info the Tech gave me.

I installed the update through MSDN. You can run a small routine which sets up your machine to download it as a normal system update. It installed fine, no adverse effects, as a matter of fact no effects at all.