Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack Release Notebook: version SP1

SP1 includes a number of changes which allow computer manufacturers and consumers to select a default desktop search program similar to the way they currently select defaults for third-party web browsers and media players. That means that in addition to the numerous ways a user could access a third party search solution in Windows Vista, they can now get to their preferred search results from additional entry points in the Start Menu and Explorer Windows in Windows Vista with SP1. 3rd party software vendors simply need to register their search application using the newly provided protocol in Windows Vista SP1 to enable these options for their customers.

With SP1, Windows Vista will report the amount of system memory installed rather than report the amount of system memory available to the OS. Therefore 32-bit systems equipped with 4GB of RAM will report all 4GB in many places throughout the OS, such as the System Control Panel. However, this behavior is dependent on having a compatible BIOS, so not all users may notice this change.

SP1 reduces the number of UAC (User Account Control) prompts from 4 to 1 when creating or renaming a folder at a protected location.

Improvements in the Licensing User Interface and User Experience including more details in the help about activation and what happens if user does not activate; more detailed and descriptive dialog text; raw error codes replaced with easily comprehensible text.

SP1 modifies the text in the Ultimate Extras Control Panel to describe the Ultimate Extras program in more general terms.

Upon scanning a photo with the Vista scanning experience, SP1 will open Explorer rather than opening Windows Photo Gallery.

Users are now required to enter a password hint during the initial setup of Windows Vista SP1. This change was made based on feedback from top PC manufactures that many customers frequently do not remember their password and because the administrator account is turned off by default on Windows Vista, these users do not have a way to access to their PCs. A password hint helps avoid this frustrating scenario.

Improves compatibility with 3rd party diagnostic tools that rely on raw sockets by applying the same delivery logic to control (ICMP v4 and v6) and regular packages.

With SP1, Microsoft differentiates the experience customers have using non-genuine versions of our software. This is based on feedback we heard from volume license customers in particular as part of our Windows Genuine Advantage program.

SP1 also includes updates that deal with two exploits we have seen, which can affect system stability for our customers.

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 scenarios:

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 in line with previous IE releases.

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