Windows Vista SP1 Now Available ... Is It Worth It?

Here's a story why some people don't see it yet http://www.computerworld.com/action...ArticleBasic&articleId=9069338&intsrc=hm_list

 

All in all, I would definitely say it is worth it. Remember those performance hotfixes that were released, due to slow file copying especially? That and all the latest fixes alone makes it worth it.

 

The Improvements both in system functions and performance are very sensible for me. I have tons of software installed without any problem which I had before SP1. Vista is now usable.

 

I've been doing some quick tests on file copying to a flash drive (folder with 109 files occupying 290MB)

1. Vista without SP1 (but with other intermediate hotfixes) : 95 seconds

2. Vista with SP1 : 75 seconds

3. Windows XP (but on a different computer) : 55 seconds

So while SP1 may have speeded up the transfers, XP is still faster. I expect Microsoft will try to fix this in XP SP3.

John

 

You make it sound like XP SP3 will intentionally make things slower so that Vista looks better .

Honestly, with Windows 7 supposedly only two years away...I think I'll be staying with XP on all my machines. At least as long as they don't break :/...

 

I'll second that. I've been following the Vista "thing" with some interest since I'm going to be getting a new system shortly (yeah, finally! ), and these results simply reinforce my decision to get that system with XP or XP Pro (more likely since it has a longer use-by date vis-a-vis MS security support).

All in all, Vista is looking more and more like a reincarnation of ME, which is too bad, one would have hoped that MS had learned something from that episode.

 

yeah, true,
i havent noticed any 'remarkable' speed improvements after sp1 was installed.
the system seems ALITTLE more responsive than before.

Gonna stick with it though, cuz i aint gonna shell out on a copy of xp, and i hate torrents.

roll on windows 7

 

Hmm... I'll download it next month.
I used up all my bandwidth a few nights ago.
Silly me. Well I'll enjoy my movie k.

 

3DMark06 before SP1: 7024

3DMark06 after SP1: 7148

I also think my boot up times may be a bit faster, but I haven't sat down to time them yet.

 

So Microsoft admits that SP1 caused driver issues.. maybe some people who are having decrease in performance or resolution problems are one of those people with drivers microsoft thought they fixed..or don't realize are part of the problem

 

I've evaluated SP1 in a corporate enviromnent. You do have to wait a few days for indexing to re-establish itself after installing SP1.

Performance is pretty much the same as pre-SP1 overall. However there are several benefits for installing SP1 from my experience:

1. More stable - far less Windows Explorer crashes
2. Network file copy much improved - not as fast as XP but no longer an issue and far more reliable. No more freezes or ridiculous waits for Vista to estimate the size of the copy
3. Whilst perfomance hasn't improved the user interface is much more responsive. This is what I believe users will notice the most e.g when you click on an icon or window it responds immediately rather than pre-SP1 often taking several seconds.

Having said all this SP1 really confirms what a nasty, lazy and incompetant organisation Microsoft are. With SP1 they've now got Vista to do all the basic things that any operating system should be able to do. Like many I firmly believe that Vista was released before being ready. The version released was really only release candidate quality. SP1 now makes Vista RTM quality. It's a pity they've forced many millions of users to ineffect Beta test their software for them and have to put up with a sub-standard OS.

There's a very good reason why the business world won't touch a Microsoft product prior to SP1.

 

Well my Kaspersky would lock up the whole system when it tried to update itself with the SP1. Things got pretty ugly last night and I finally uninstalled SP1 which took a good 2 hours. Now I need to upgrade my Kaspersky to a newer build engine but I don't feel good about SP1. The superfetch seemed to interfere more in SP1 and overall things did not run smoothly but it may have all been the kaspersky. Not the experience I had expected but at least the uninstaller finally worked. During that two hours for the uninstall I was thinking just how monstrous windows has become and that MS could have done so much better in giving us an OS that is not so demanding and resource hungry.

 

I'm on my M1330 right now and I've had my laptop turned on for around 5 mins and I don't see any windows update icon on my taskbar. I've tried to check under control panel -> Windows Update -> View additional updates... and Vista SP1 was not listed.

 

Hi, the Sp1 updates was also no listed in mi windows update. but i went to microsoft.com downloaded it directly and installed without any problem...no bad driver messege is shown ( is that call force installation?)

 

Hey, so I just installed SP1 successfully on my sager np 2090 - and no problems so far. But has anyone noticed that the superfetch is taking TWICE AS LONG at startup? Pre sp1, my harddrive light was active for 4-5 mins. Now with SP1 installed, it takes 10-12 min! So that's not looking good.
Can anyone else shed any light on this?

 

How can I tell if I have SP1 already installed? It hasn't shown up on Windows Update for me (yet). I don't think I have installed SP1 on it, but with all the Windows Updates that came along the pipeline, maybe it did get installed without me knowing...

Edit: Forgot to mention that I'm using Vista on my desktop, not my MBP. Desktop is an AMD Athlon 64 3800 (dual-core), so maybe that has something to do with it?

 

I believe so... According to their website, it says if you have drivers that are not up to date windows updates is supposed to advise you in installing those updates before installing vista SP1. There are other cases where updates are held back (eg: if the updates may conflict with some of your hardware) so they make you wait until those manufactures have released new updates before applying SP1.

 

Vista shouldn't re-install stock drivers, but it would definately help to re-install all current drivers for your hardware. SP1 fixes many program errors with WMP and IE7, as far as halts go.

 

If Vista is meant to be better then why is data transfer still slower (I wonder whether every byte gets checked for DRM compliance). So it's not beyond the limits of credibility that Microsoft will apply the "improvements" to XP, on the grounds of better data integrity or some other excuse.

John

 

Don't knock it till you've tried it, bud.

All of the Windows ME references are BS. Did anyone here ever actually USE Windows ME? NO?

Well I did, and Vista is nothing like it.

ME caused me to physically attack my computer, something that Vista has never (and never will) do.

 

... until Vista shoots you in the foot. Just kidding.

Vista is pretty good, once you tune it to work the way you want it to. Same thing had to be done for XP way back when.

 

Hey, if my OS is capable of wielding a firearm against me, I'll call it a feature and buy 10 copies for protection.

 

I just found SP1 on my windows update. Wasn't there about five minutes ago when the only thing update found was a windows defender update. Once I'd installed the defender update, checked windows update again and SP1 was listed.
Can't be bothered to install it now - hope I have a smooth transistion tommorrow however. I'm glad that its more resposinve though - hate it when you close a window it doesn't respond immediatly.

Good luck!!
Jam.

 

After countless reboots and an entire day shilling idle in the office, the Averatec has finally come around and is going faster.

PCMark05 is at 3170
wPrime is 35.891 (better then before)
3dMark06 377... still sucks but what can ya say

 

Just installed it through Windows update. All I had to do was install a security update before the service pack became available. Didn't tell me to update any drivers, but everything seems to be working flawlessly, no slow downs at all.

 

I have an M1330 (SSD) and I am having some trouble after SP1 install via Windows Update.

• Startup and shutdown times take longer now (???)

• At random times, Intel 4965AGN card will not work properly

• Program files take a while to open and close

Besides those, I haven't experienced a BSOD, so far.....

 

StormEffect,

Thanks again for the help. My problems have been resolved! I actually decided to try 167.58 first as it was specifically listed as an Asus/HP driver for the GeForce Go 7700 that I have. There were a few moments during the install that I had absolutely no video at all, not even the infamous A8Js light leak, but in the end I had my native resolution back.

For any fellow Asus owners out there that experience the same problem, 167.58 from laptopvideo2go.com solved the problem.

 

Now that I've installed SP1, new problems have arisen.

1. I can no longer use my touchpad to scroll
2. The hibernate and sleep options in the start menu are gone. I can't put the computer into hibernate mode or sleep any more.

Good going Microsoft. If anyone knows how to fix any of these problems, I'd really appreciate it.

 

For #2, you might just need to check the power options in the control panel to re-enable them. Try that out. I'd try myself, but for some reason my computer is one of which Windows Update doesn't show the SP1 update due to some driver incompatibilities or something...

 

The mouse drivers might have been 'reset', and you might need to enable the scrolling again via the Control Panel.

 

Here's my benchies (this is on a desktop.. laptop running XP )

3DMark 06 (Before SP1): 9877
3DMark 06 (After SP1): 9922

COD4: Before SP1: 56fps
After SP1: 59fps

Overall system performance seems to have improved remarkably!

 

Hi everyone
I have a probelem ,I can't find the sp1 update in my update list,evey time I check it tells me that my computer is up to date
I have hp 8510w and windows vista business

 

the problem is with the fingertip reader driver. wait til fixed.

 

As noted above, this is correct. I would say more than a couple of days. Instead, two defragmentation cycles (leave your machine on overnight from tuesday to Wednesday, as vista's default defrag schedule occurs then

 

Was there any updates? Vista sp1 required three pre-requisite updates to prepare for sp1

Without them, you cannot update.

Also, sp1 is not a mandatory update at this time, but optional. It will not be mandatory until, I think, June

 

I used Windows ME, for 4 years on my laptop. Didnt ever crash or get a virus.

 

Anyone tried to use this on a G1S? Does it improve anything?

 

Just installed SP1 Yesterday, It took really long to install a service pack definitely much longer than any past service pack that was previously rolled out. And the first service pack that install before and after shutdown.

Was not really testing the system for speed, but looking for less bugs. Hopefully the explorer BAGS bugs is solved. I already delete the "Bags" from regedit 5 times.

One thing nice I found was that the disk defrag tool can now defrag a particular drive instead of all previously.

If indeed battery life could be extended 30 min that would be worth the upgrade alone.

 

wprime 1.58:
before SP1
i got 42.114s
After SP1
i got 41.771s

but in wPrime 1.60 i got 71.221 sec !! :S
and which processor is faster, t7300 or turion x2 TL-64 ?

 

Yes, I used ME. I've been using all sorts of operating systems since about 1969.

Vista was the most unstable thing I've ever tried. I actually had Vista destroy it's activation about nine times due to problems in the OS, another time it was a driver from intel, and the power management stuff that comes with laptops. Many, many, many BSODs. Hours of getting Microsoft to try and dig the machine out of holes they had drilled for it. I will say this though, the Microsoft engineers were very sympathetic and they did eventually solve most of the issues. We still have one outstanding unexplained behaviour of CHKDSK that not even they had ever seen, but eventually some of the installs we had to do subsequently seem to have mostly removed that behavior. It is definitely the worst OS experience in my very long career. Vista is the first time I went out and got a hot spare laptop because the OS was too unstable.

As time has gone on, things seem to be a little better. Since the most recent complete reinstall and driver installation fest, this machine has done pretty well - gone for two months with only one BSOD just a couple days ago which it recovered from pretty gracefully. Now with SP1, who knows? Things might finally be nice and smooth.

ME was actually not really that bad for me. A lot of other people had all sorts of problems, but I had it on two different machines and it didn't screw up much at all.

 

ME was just crippled Win98 -- all theproblems inherent in 98 were also in ME, plus you didn't have as much ability to tweak things to improve it. Much of its problems were more a result of bad drivers and bad programs--programmatically, ME and 98 were worse than NT-based OSs because it could not handle bad drivers and programs well. MT, 2000 XP and now Vista are much better at trapping errors and ensuring they don't kill the rest of the OS. It's probably also worth noting that hardware manufacturers quality is much higher. RAM is significantly better, and therefore can handle faster speeds without rolling over and dying.

As for Vista--it's very much a singular experience based again, on hardware. Early Vista drivers were simply not ready for prime time. Microsoft's definition of Vista capable was inadequate. For a machine that was two years old, new enough to have the muscle and old enough so that the hardware was stable and where Microsoft provided the drivers, Vista has run well. For machines that Vista was designed for, Vista is still quite capable.

For machines that were less than a year old (too new), or more than three years old, Vista was a dud.

I am curious, Zenpharaos, what issue you had with chkdsk....

 

I never wanted to use Vista because of slowness, but I tried. I have 2 computers and sony SZ became very fast and Lenovo T61 showed only little improments after SP1 installed. Now I enjoy using sony SZ. SP1 is much better than the old one. For Lenovo, I might need to reinstall the drivers.

Start up and shut down, opening things and running them so quick now.

Both computer have the same specs:

2.2 GHz CPU
2 GB RAM
160 HD

 

I installed it a couple of days ago and apart from a very long update process, I haven't noticed any differences... my laptop works pretty much the same as before.

 

I would say my Vista torture was mostly on new machines that were actually shipped with Vista. The only case I had of trying to move from XP to Vista was a machine that was "Vista Ready" and passed all the hardware guidelines, had a lot of muscle and memory, but it turns out the graphics on that notebook were just never ever going to work with Vista. I really enjoyed that machine (MSI-1058).

Setting that aside, all my other bad experiences with Vista were on the T61 I am using to write this. This machine shipped with Vista, has the 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, the 4GB memory, discrete Nvidia graphics, 7200 rpm drive, 1GB turbo memory module. The anguish occurred mostly because the various drivers would get confused by some notebook type events (power management, hard drive protection, etc.) and once they got confused they would start hosing everything. Then you would get these bizarre downstream effects when you rebooted (sometimes you had to reboot). The really hideous one was when turbo memory got corrupted but the machine would insist on trying to boot from that data.

Now with stuff like that going on, it's no wonder that CHKDSK had a lot on it's plate. And man was it not up to the task. It was hideously slow (one poor Microsoft engineer had me going through some checklist and when I pointed out that it was going to take three hours to to the CHKDSK she didn't really believe me, even though I had just done that; to her credit she stayed on the speakerphone the whole time, occasionally asking "has it finished yet?" perhaps hoping that I was exaggerating about the three hours....).

Well CHKDSK got to a point where it would detect a bunch of junk in the filesystem, and, because we told it to fix stuff, it would report that it found errors, and that it had made changes to the file system. But in fact if you ran it again, then it would find the same errors, pretend to fix them, and not do it. Oddly enough, both the engineer and I came to the conclusion that the CHKDSK we were using was corrupt, so we booted off of distribution media and ran that CHKDSK, only to get the same behavior. So apparently it was not a corrupt CHKDSK, it was a file system state that CHKDSK couldn't fix.

OK so we re-installed Vista, went begging to the activation police yet again, and then on the clean install, we found the same behavior. Now how's that for weird? Well, OK we both figured the hard drive was wacky so we swapped out the hard drive. We went begging to the activation police again, and found that the same behavior occurred. Plus, we swapped the old drive as a secondary drive in another T61 and ran CHKDSK on that, with the same result.

Microsoft did not end up explaining those results. We had to repeat some of them for a research engineer. I don't know what ever became of that.

Over time, possibly as a result of hotfixes and updates since then, this machine has run CHKDSK a couple times (last time was the BSOD just before SP1 install) and there are only two loose files that get recovered as opposed to the original 18. So I suppose it might be converging on better.

I don't think anyone can explain this unless there was a very old unsuspected bug in CHKDSK that was exposed by the bizarre state that Vista spun my hard drives into.

Who knows? Other than the one recent BSOD, the machine runs reasonably, and I have the hot spare machine just in case.

By the way I love the T61 hardware. If it weren't for the fact that these days I need a 64 bit OS I would have gone with XP for the spare.

 

My Asus was perfectly stable or responsive before SP1, and it still is, save for one little issue that I ran into the other day.

For some reason or another, I couldn't access the volume control. This had never happened before. I kept clicking on the speaker icon in the system tray and it just wouldn't pop up. About 5 minutes later, the volume window finally decided to show itself.

 

my windows vista start faster

 

I'm thinking of trying to get the SP1 update from the Microsoft download page, because Windows Update doesn't show it. It would be cool to have it tell me what hardware or software isn't known to be compatible with SP1, so I can decide on if I can remove it or not to get the update... has anyone gone that route since Windows Update doesn't show SP1 for there systems? If so, any problems so far with it?

Thanks in advance.

 

I have experienced situation as zenpharaohs.

I purchased a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 in last week of Nov-2007, and I have probably spent 10 days of my own time reloading operating systems, testing, and talking with IBM Service over the telephone. This T61 has been a complete disaster.

I ordered the T61 with a 200GB encrypting hard drive and discovered in early December that the boot-time CHKDSK would not work...the CHKDSK stopped about 75% through stage 5 of 5. I then had the hard drive swapped out for another. Upon receiving the new 200 GB hard drive I noted that the new drive, after being reloaded with Vista, that the boot-time CHKDSK would also stop at around 75% through stage 5 of 5. I felt the problem was probably related to the newness of Vista....so I moved forward.

About two months later I start seeing a situation where Norton Ghost will not finish, but simply stops before the image copy is finished. I have been using Norton GHost for image copies for years. Again I run a CHKDSK and of course the CHKDSK also stops...this time at about 98% through stage 5 of 5. This time I send the entire T61 system back to IBM Service (evidently Lenovo outsources the maintenance of these machines to IBM). They send it back the 1st time and nothing has changed....so I send it back. I get on the telephone to discuss the problem with IBM and they advise that I should run the BIOS level hard drive test, however this BIOS level test fails with Error Code 0000 Read Verification Error. I send it in a 2nd time. IBM works on it and replaces the system board. I get it back from the 2nd service trip. The BIOS level test will still not work. Not only will the BIOS level test not work...but IBM kept 2GB of my 4GB resident memory. Depending upon who I talk with at IBM Service the BIOS level test is a problem or perhaps is not a problem. As it turns out the 200GB 7200rpm drive is so new that IBM/Lenovo has not even finished coding the BIOS level diagnostics support fot it yet. This is obviously what one calls shipping product not ready for market.

I have a conversation with IBM and I request a minimum 200GB drive which is supported by the BIOS level tests. I also make it clear that I am willing to forego the encrypting hard drive feature. I will just need to make sure no one steals my laptop.

So now.... here we are.... it is now Easter Day.... and I expect to have a new 250GB non-encrypting hard drive tomorrow, which is supported by the T61 BIOS diagnostics, although this is probably @ 5400rpm.

I did download Vista SP1 over the Easter weekend onto the waiting T61 with the 200GB 7200rpm drive...and the boot-time CHKDSK did work....however this does not necessarily mean anything...because it would occasionally work on the T61 prior to Vista SP1.....so not sure what (if anything) this means.

Any advice or similar experiences with Thinkpad T61s would be interesting to hear ???

I have owned six or seven Thinkpads since 1992. It may be time to move on to Dell. What do you think ?

 

Wow...Plippard and Zenpharaohs.... can't believe you guys are going through these problems. Don't know how I'll cope if i get half of your problems.
The only time i had a problem with my Vista pc is when i followed an on-line tweaking advice and messed up something. My pc would not boot and i was mad as hell. Apart from that, vista has not given me even 1 BSOD since i got it (10-11 months now) For me Vista is very stable. Annoying features but stable.
Hope you guys get a vaccine for your vista illness.

 

I was curious about that because I ran into a very weird chkdsk issue myself at one point with a machine, and it was very similar---it would take forever, not fix errors, report the same errors over and over, or not finish (get halfway through and then restart). I tried a couple of things, including dropping the harddrive in a second Vista machine and still could not get it to clear. Then, on a lark, I dropped it into an XP machine and ran chkdsk on the volume. It found and corrected errors, and the errors did not return. I then returned the drive to the flaky machine and chkdsk ran fine in VISTA after that.