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Vista SP1 Coming In Q1 2008

Many readers sent in word of Microsoft's announcement of the schedule for Vista SP1. The Beskerming blog has a good summary. Up to 15,000 people will get access to a beta of SP1 by the end of September; general release is targeted (not promised in stone) for early 2008. The service pack is said to improve performance and stability, not to add features.

9 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Windows XP SP3 by Jugalator · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/service packs.mspx

    It's planned for 1JHCKY 2008...

    SP3 for Windows XP Professional is currently planned for 1H CY2008

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  2. it seems that the standalone image is going to be by LordSnooty · · Score: 3, Informative

    ... 1GB

    *agog*

    And you need 7GB of disk space? Are you sure this is just a service pack? Bloat!!

  3. performance and reliability fixes are already out by Arathon · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you look around the web, you'll find that the main two fixes to be included in SP1 are already out, and have been since the beginning of August.

    Ars Technica article about the packs

  4. Memory by El+Lobo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hmm... Here we go again.....Vista doesn't chew memory upp, for crying out loud! . Vista is USING the memory that is unused. What do you pay for your memory for? To have it unused? If nobody is using it, Vista will just use it damn it!. Don't worry, if some application will need it, Vista's memory manager will give it back.

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  5. Think it is SuperFetch you're describing? by Blahbooboo3 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Unless you are saying you need more ram (which may be true), this is why Vista always has all of the memory utilized

    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsv ista/features/details/superfetch.mspx

    SuperFetch

    Windows SuperFetch enables programs and files to load much faster than they would on Windows XP-based PCs.

    When you're not actively using your computer, background tasks--including automatic backup programs and antivirus scans--run when they will least disturb you. These background tasks can take up system memory space that your programs had been using. On Windows XP-based PCs, this can slow progress to a crawl when you attempt to resume work.

    SuperFetch monitors which applications you use the most and preloads these into your system memory so they'll be ready when you need them. Windows Vista also runs background programs, like disk defragmenting and Windows Defender, at low priority so that they can do their job but your work always comes first.

  6. Re:yea.. thanks microsoft.. by Jugalator · · Score: 5, Informative

    vista really chews the memory up, I hope they fix that first off..

    Here's my unofficial mini-service pack for Vista. :-p

    1. Type services.msc in the start menu search box and go there.
    2. Open and set "Windows Search" to "Inactive" as its start mode and stop the service, unless you use Vista's search facilities and not a third party tool like Total Commander or Directory Opus, etc.
    3. Open and disable "Superfetch" in the same way, unless you trust it to actually make things run faster and predict your usage behavior. Keep in mind that it'll keep caching data to RAM in its "prediction" process. Even data files, not just executables and DLL's. This can be especially nasty when it starts caching 100 MB-sized files you have downloaded with P2P apps because it think you'll run them soon, or something.
    4. Try putting in a ReadyBoost-compatible (you probably won't know if it is until you've tried :-p) USB memory stick and have Vista manage it as extra RAM. It's not really RAM-fast or anything (but it doesn't seem to make things worse at least), but especially seeemed to cut a bit on hard drive access. I'm not sure, but it's possible it relocates some of its swap file to it as ReadyBoost kicks in.
    5. If you haven't got these installed (you'll notice if it tells you they can't be installed on your OS), download and install these Vista hotfixes performance and reliability and compatibility and reliability. Among other things included is fixes to the Vista memory manager and many users have reported both cut memory usage directly after boot up, and better 3D benchmark scores. It also fixes the infamous "slow file copy" bug of Vista.

    Now try use it for a day or so, and hopefully your hard drive access has been cut. As long as you don't use the Vista desktop search, no disabled services above really impact the ability of Vista to function as normal, and you can always enable them again if you notice no improvement. Something else that access your drive a lot at a few times is the System Restore feature that also runs as a service, but I don't recommend disabling that one since it'll also disable your ability to restore your OS state to an earlier date if, say, an application or driver install would go horribly wrong.

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    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  7. Window Handles my friend. by oliverthered · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's because of window handles, I get the problem all the time in XP. As soon as all the window handles are used up you can no longer create any new windows, the problem is that closing windows doesn't seem to free them up and the only thing to do is reboot.

    I would have thought they would have fixed this obvious problem that causes no end of grief to people where I work ages ago. Looks like I'll have to stick the X Windows.

    Now, if only someone in Microsoft would realise that forms in Word have been broken since the year . and actually fix them.

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    1. Re:Window Handles my friend. by weicco · · Score: 3, Informative

      closing windows doesn't seem to free them up

      You are right. Closing window doesn't free handle. Program must explicitly call CloseHandle. And take notice that closing window doesn't necessarily end the program. So poorly written program could end up chewing handles and resources. But at the moment process has ended all it's handles are released automatically.

      But I wasn't aware of any global handle limit in Windows, only that it's limited to system resources mainly memory. There's a per process GDI handle limit (something between 256 and 65536, W2K defaults to 16384) which is a good thing or otherwise one thread could end up eating every resource from system. I tried to google around on this one but found nothing. Could you provide a link to a site that talks about global handle limit in Windows XP?

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  8. Re:vista sp1 by jd142 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes, the monthly updates will get most of the service pack. That's one of the two reasons that the windows update version should only be around 50 megs for a fully patched computer vs. 1 gig for the standalone install: sp1 will rollup already released patches. The other big reason is that the 1 gig version has all of the language files included. You won't download the Japanese language versions of the files from windows update if all you need is English. The 1 gig file will let admins push out just one file to client computers, during a downtime period of course, and know that everything that's needed will be installed.