Slashdot Mirror
Vista Service Pack One Almost Here
arogier writes "After numerous delays and an actual release reversal, the official release date for Vista service pack one has been set for Tuesday, March 18th on Windows Update and Microsoft Downloads. It will be released as an automatic update on April 18th. 'It's unclear so far how a February snafu will affect SP1's roll-out. Last month, after Microsoft pushed a pair of prerequisite patches to users, some reported that their machines refused to finish installing one of the fixes, then went into an endless series of reboots. Several days later, Microsoft pulled the update from automatic delivery, said it was working on a solution and promised it would "make the update available again shortly after we address the issue."' It would be a good time for those planning to adopt early to perform requisite backups and locate their restore media."
Great news, but it doesn't matter to me anymore. I already pirated it from bittorrent. Read that again. I was so desperate to make it work I had to STEAL FIXES for an operating system I LEGALLY BOUGHT. Says a lot about Vista, doesn't it.
Service Pack One is almost ready for release!! That makes it what, three more packs before its ready for release?? Not sure..
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Now to see how many "I'll wait for SP1 before moving to Vista" people actually follow through.
I believe there is/was a shadow volume copy problem with Vista that prevented complete backups. If shadow volume copy does not work you will not be able to back things up like the registry. Either way a complete disk image will work since you do it from outside of the OS. This can be done with "partimage" on knoppix for free or Acronis and various others for a nicer UI.
... I can't help but pity those poor Vista users. What should be simply the release of a patch has become a major "event" which people actually have to prepare for and which, from what I hear, is even causing something quite similar to mild panic. But then again, you do get great DRM for your troubles.
And how about the poor people like us (in majority) who won't be able to use the BIOS Emulation crack anymore? ;)
To avoid any confusion with Leopard they made the letters VISTA really big on the background screen. This is a major advance over the smaller lettering in the initial release. To help add a familiar feel they also brought back Clippy and increased the size of it's floating Window. To help the less computer literate Clippy looks sad when Vista finds incompatible software or hardware. When you activate Office Clippy gives you a big thumbs up and add a verbal, "Thanks for buying Microsoft". It's rumored he looks sad if you activate Open Office and gives a little reminder that a study run by Microsoft proves that open source software causes Erectile Dysfunction.
Gentoo 2008.0 was schedulled to be released on that same day...
Onda Technology Institute
Amazingly, this sounds exactly like the version of Windows I'm currently using, so why would I upgrade?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Having bought a new Dell laptop with Vista on that's lower spec than my work machine (policy is to update desktops later this year), my laptop almost always feels far more responsive.
Plus, there's other unsung stuff in Vista i've not seen in any OS - the problem solutions centre (not sure exactly how to translate into English); when I got it I had my one and only BSOD in Vista. Shocked, I rebooted and as soon as I was back to the desktop Windows pops up a message saying "I see something real bad happened; do you mind if I see if there's a solution online?". Click Yes, comes back saying "Ah I crashed because of this driver; there's a update to it here which will fix the problem". It's never happened since.
So yeah, there's reasons Vista is better. UAC is top too; I like to know when a program is gonna try and change my system (some try that you'd never think would - denied).
It's an upgrade without a doubt. I wouldn't pay specifically to upgrade mind you, but I appreciate the changes as they come anyway.
throw new NoSignatureException();
I don't know if this is a good omen. My journal post about service pack one made the front page, and I'm planning to put it on my system tomorrow. I'm probably going to look like the world's biggest fecal outlet if it corrupt my system tomorrow and I forget to backup. Then again my plan to back up is just rar'ing my documents and splitting it across several DVD's. I guess I'm going to have to pick up DVD's today. eHow I plan to do the install
http://www.aaronrogier.net
Did anyone else look at the title of this article and immediately think of "Battered person syndrome"? I did for some reason. Weird.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
When is XP SP3 coming out? I need to do a reformat of my machine. I have the all-in-one SP2 installer and I don't want to have to download all the stupid patches between SP2 and today separately.
One thing is for certain..
..after the initial release then pull, the bricked PCs, the host of security issues and the whole general fuck up that MS have done over vista so far I predict a cautious, "if I must", approach from sys admins with every possible protection and back-up in place. This is not going to be a stampede for the latest secure patches. Truly MS has been a shot in the foot release for them.
Second the poster higher up: it will sure be interested to see how many of the wait for SP1 adopters now follow through and adopt.
Given the general widely held feeling about the the superiority of XP over Vista I cannot see many people clamoring to do so. But on the flip argument MS will withdraw XP soon to try and force adoption of Vista - this would leave many potential customers between a brick and a hard place.
No bother to me - I've been linux only at home for ~8 years (so I guess I'm biased) - but we sure live in interesting times.
I've been using Vista 64-bit since not long after it was released and I'm quite satisfied (I'd have moved back to XP if I wasn't).
/. and other sites like it for some time. I also expect that it won't matter. Most people will get Vista as they get new computers, and it'll slowly become the dominant Windows since it'll work just fine for those that get it.
The reason people slam it so much here is because they badly want it to fail. It is predominantly FUD.
The echo chamber effect is a big reason you hear so much. Someone has a bad experience with Vista, or perhaps just makes one up, and writes/talks about it. Thsi then gets repeated by people who hate MS and want to see Vista do poorly. You discover that these people have never actually used Vista, they are just repeating something they heard somewhere. So it sounds like there are more people having problems than there is.
Of the people I know that have mostly bad things to say about Vista, I'd say at least 90% have never actually used it. They "Read about it somewhere," or "Some guy they know told them," and so on. They have no experience with it, other than perhaps having seen it on a computer. They are simply repeating stories. Of those that have used it and dislike it, almost all of them actually have an issue with something else, that they are blaming on Vista. For example a coworker was pissed because his DJ hardware/software combo didn't work. Ok, well check compatibility first, and that isn't a Vista issue. It doesn't support Linux either.
Another problem is people who try to run it on insufficient hardware. This happens with basically every Windows release that I can remember. I remember all the complaints that Windows 95 didn't run well on 4MB of RAM, even though that was the minimum. The response was, of course, yes that's the MINIMUM, not the "gets good performance" amount. Same deal with Vista, people have old systems with insufficient hardware, particularly RAM (since not that long ago RAM was real pricey). They install Vista and find it doesn't perform well, and thus get angry.
All in all, you can just expect to see continued Vista hate on
If your interested in downloading and installing a fresh copy of Vista with SP1 integrated, be sure to hunt down the ISO (provided by MSDN).
File Name: en_windows_vista_with_service_pack_1_x86_dvd_x14-29594.iso
File Size: 2943MB
MD5: b09267740ddd1a08d80b04ec6bbc232a
SHA1: bcd715a02739809e477c726ae4b5caa914156429
So far, I've noticed a fast improvement with Disk IO performance with SP1. I think I'm going to take Vista for another spin now that it feels "faster". It's still a memory hog however. I'd recommend 2GB or 1GB at the very least.
Life is not for the lazy.
Be glad you didn't buy Vista on day 1. The first six months sucked royally I've read and it's only recently become better. For myself, I bought Vista the day that Service Pack 1 was announced so I missed most of the ... joy ... I got on ship when it was reasonably nice. And about 3 weeks ago ZDNet was kind enough to publish MD5's of the final release MS sent them to evangalize about so I was able to acquire a copy, the MD5's matched so the worst it could be was a key collision and the installer wasn't corrupted so it was legit. It even shows the correct build number in System Information. Now since I didn't jump on ship until after they bailed some of the water out its been a fairly smooth ride for me. And since I installed SP1 I guess it's better - some things like alt-tabbing out of games don't wonk (thats a technical term) the system anymore so all in all its an incremental improvement. And it's definitely a lot less of a shock transitioning from XP to Vista than it was from 98 to XP headache wise.
Shh.
What would we care about this service pack? The only interesting thing about this evil non-GPL OS is when it will be phased out of existence.
Does this article means that Vista is coming out of Beta?
It did once claim to have found a solution to system crash, pointing to a Lenovo page that did not exists. UAC is top too; I like to know when a program is gonna try and change my system (some try that you'd never think would - denied). That is the one thing I like about Vista. I think of it as the Microsoft answer to "sudo". It was annoying at the beginning, where you had to press yes so many times. Makes me worry about whether it will have the intended affect, or simply teach people to press "yes" whenever they see a pop-up. It's an upgrade without a doubt. Most people at my work who have "accidentally" ordered new PC's with Vista have ended up asking the it support guys "downgrade" them to XP. I have been stubborn though, waiting to see if it gets better with time. It does, but nowhere near enough to compensate for the initial drop in productivity.
I won't respond to your comment, but DRM is BUILT-IN to the Operating System. How much more serious can it get?
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
I've been running SP1 RTM for a while and Vista since the betas. I find that SP1 has fixed a LOT of the stability issues and BSODs that I had. Speed on some operation is better, but overall, Vista still seems slower than XP.
What I have found is that a lot of issues were caused by sleep/hibernate being broken and that most of the remainder are caused by drivers. The discovery data from the Vista lawsuit shows that MS knew they'd broken lots of drivers and that Intel drivers were pathetic. Vista would have been a step forward for MS if they hadn't thrown out all concern about quality.
though at least they still have updates coming through Windows Update
I applied one of the updates (KB944533) and it killed http. Internet explorer would not open up web pages, but would give the "server could not be reached" error. I was able to ping just fine, and I could reach the page from another computer on the same network. The kicker was that the patch not only knocked out IE, but Firefox as well. Things worked fine after uninstalling the patch. Of course, the patch got re-installed the very next day.
Yesterday I decided to install some more patches, hoping that they would remedy the bug in KB944533. Nope! In fact, the DHCP client stopped working. I could no longer get anything but APIPA addresses. I uninstalled those patches, hoping to recover, but no dice. I decided to roll back the machine about two weeks, and now it blue screens.
Now Microsoft isn't the only culprit. A language pack update in Ubuntu is killing a number of my KDE apps (k3b in particular). So I have two machines that I have to run unpatched operating systems on, because patching them causes them to not work. At least I have a choice to ignore the patch with Ubuntu. Windows applies the patches without asking.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Non, non. The only way this would be normal is a bluescreen at the end ;)
No tyrant thrives when every subject says no.
I loved Vista when I first installed it, then learned to loathe it more and more the more stuff I tried to install. I'm just getting around to tolerating it again and now the SP is due tomorrow. uSoft must be working with the DOD in developing "Marketing Terrorism".
http://8help.osu.edu/3618.html
Is this problem fixed? I still have no idea what the hell causes it and the solution is less then ideal. If anyone has any other information they would like to add on this, please do so, because it bewilders me.
Just make sure your Time Machine backup is up-to-date, and then--
Oh, wait.
My favorite Vista travesty is that it takes several minutes to move a folder containing several gigabytes of files.
/scannow' which tells me there's some sort of corruption in a system file and that I should look at cbs.log, which I do, and it contains several thousands of lines of messages I can't understand, much less figure out whether they're errors. Near as I can figure, the culprit is that the SP1 installer can't delete a file named windir\ehome\ehres.dll, so I try moving that out of the way by hand, but no combination of things I try can get it to move - Windows keeps telling me I don't have permission to move it, even if I try renaming it from a command shell run as administrator, even if I boot into safe mode.
Let me reiterate: I'm dragging one folder icon into a different folder. An operation which, for Mac or Linux, merely involves rewriting an inode. But for Windows Vista, a dialog box comes up which shows the computer recursively going through every file and directory in the folder I'm moving, as if a file or folder somehow needs its location updated independently of the folder it's in. Several minutes later, my drag has finished being processed.
I've heard that Vista SP1 improves file handling, so two weeks ago I obtained Vista Service Pack 1 through the MSDN membership at my workplace. But a few minutes into the install, it fails with error 0x8007000d and points me to a tech note which advises me to turn off antivirus (done), run a disk check (done), and then run 'sfc
I have a feeling, come tomorrow when Vista SP1 is released to the masses, there's going to be more headscratching than celebrating.
I went to the "Heros Happen Here" brain dump last week, just for the free software. Along with server 2008, SQL 2008 and Studio 2008, they threw in a copy of Vista Ultimate w/SP1 already installed.
And for the record, Vista Ultimate SP1 is slower than XP on my machine.
My first 3 experiences with Windows Vista (In the form of Vista Home Premium upgrade) were disasters.
First time it wouldn't install due to me either having 4 DIMMS present or the fact they totaled 4GB (not sure which caused the issue)
Second time wiped a RAID 0 array and took out my Windows XP Pro 64bit install
Third time, I had a hard drive crash.
Since persistance tends to pay off, I decided to throw it on another system. This time, the experience was far more enjoyable.
The system I installed it on is comprised of:
Biostar GeForce 6100 M9 motherboard
AMD Athlon64 4000+
1.25GB RAM (which I will be upgrading this week)
Integrated GeForce 6100
Integrated Sound
Integrated Network Card
Memorex DVD+-RW
(4) Seagate 500GB HDDs
Hauppauge Win-TV card (1600 model with QCAM and all that crap)
For those interested, this used to be my SAMBA Box. I used to have Ubuntu 7.10 on it and I used this system as my File Server to store my MP3s and Movies and stuff...
I originally wanted to use Ubuntu and MythTV, but I couldn't get any of the distros to boot up and install.
I downloaded Ubuntu 7.10, 8 (alpha), Mythbuntu 7.10 and Mythbuntu 8, and none of these would load up for some reason...
I can replace the current Windows Vista drive with the one containing my old Ubuntu install, and the system no longer boots up into Ubuntu.
Mythbuntu 7.10 will not boot the LiveCD unless I use safe mode graphics, and then the desktop display is distorted.
Mythbuntu 8 sits at the main menu and I am unable to even choose anything (like it isn't detecting my USB keyboard)
I replaced my USB keyboard with a PS2 IBM and there is no difference. The only configuration change between my working Ubuntu install and this Live CD was the addition of my TV Card.
It would seem to me that there is some sort of resource conflict between the TV Card but I can't see it using lspci
With Vista Home Premium, install went smooth, to a point.
Since my last install of this software was on my main gaming system I couldn't automatically activate it because it had been previously activated on another system.
I called the toll-free number, talked to the nice Indian woman (Manu, who spoke surprisingly good english) explained that I had to move the install to another hardware platform, and she gave me the numbers to activate it.
It's been working for the better part of 10 days now and Vista Media Center actually works better than the Hauppauge software did under Windows XP Home.
Previously, I could record any TV program I wanted but, when I clicked the STOP button, the software would lock up and I had to end the process.
In Vista Media Center it was easy to set up the Channel Guide and TV Listings, and it all works quite well.
I'm hoping SP1 doesn't cause more problems than it resolves, and will give it a shot when its released.
Note to any Linux gurus out there...
I'd still like to run MythTV on Ubuntu 7.10 so if you have any suggestions how to get rid of the conflict that prevents me from booting the new or old versions correctly, lemme know.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
Exactly, I'm another random hardware configuration and my: Sony Walkman, TV card, and soundcard worked off of the fresh install. I had to install my printer driver, SonicStage for the Walkman, and my video card driver all of which had Vista builds. From what I read around the 'net I thought I must have got the Magic Disc or something! On the other hand first impressions do count a lot when people are forming opinions and Vista out of the gate did suffer when you consider that although all my stuff just worked® a significant chunk of the millions of other configurations out there didn't enough to give it a bum rap - out of the gate. It's now 1 year later and it's being preloaded OEM style working properly to form longer term impressions.
Shh.
I am a tech that has been in the business for many years. When I sit behind a Vista box, my head starts hurting trying to find where everything is at. Microsuck changed so much stuff around that I feel like I need to go back to school to start over. This is total crap. Who was the target audience for this product? Because they sure missed the techs that have to support this monster. Vista remains an acronym for Virus Infections Spyware TrojanHorse and AdWare. Even after SP1.
PYROPHOR
I am currently using Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 on my laptop, which was upgraded from XP Pro. Currently, I have been using the system for 10 months without any BSOD problems, and only 1 cold boot due to a Quicktime installation error of all things (although that was a problem with Quicktime conflicting with the Intel RAID Matrix Manager and throwing my RAID configuration in a loop).
I have been using SP1 for close to a month now, due to a release via Windows Update for some x64 clients. I have to say that it is a major improvement. The total time from download to complete install was about 90 minutes. There were zero problems that I encountered. A lot of quirks that annoyed the crap out of me, such as network transfers and extracting zip files with many files/folders, have been fixed. Not only has it been fixed, but in my benchmark, speeds for both exceed those of even XP by ~20%.
Overall, I am pleased with the performance of Vista and have only very minor complaints since SP1. Most of those are really due to vendors that do not properly publish working drivers, but that is not really a MS problem as it is a vendor problem.
BFD. I installed Vista. UAC blew up in my face and hasn't been allowed to work since, even though this multi-user machine thinks everyone is an Administrator (but not THE Administrator, which is an obscure account no one discusses) whose desktops lose their user profiles at the drop of a farthing. Odds Microsoft has fixed enough of anything, especially the stuff they can't imagine ever going wrong: Zero.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Quick! Somebody cue up the "Jaws" theme...
I want SP3 for Win XP
... as I received Vista Ultimate w/ SP1 free from Microsoft at their Visual Studio 2008 release. Alas, I gave it away minutes later.
Granted it does seem somewhat useful; I was able to roll back an instillation when a vpn client gave me a BSOD. However, what am I supposed to do if I CAN'T BOOT TO WINDOWS?
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
I upgraded from XP because I have a fairly high spec machine: Pentium D (Dual-Core) @ 3.0Ghz and 2GB ram. It was top of the line when I bought it in 2006 and all I updated for Vista was upgrading the X600 it came with to a HD2600XT for DX10. I would say at the minimum you need a dual-core and 2GB ram for Vista. If it was Windows 95 those specs would be equivalent to a Pentium 100 with 24MB ram (So you could play Quake!, err, I mean Bioshock!)! And so the march of progress goes...
Shh.
Ha!
I was at the Chicago 2008 product launch (Windows 2K8 Server, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008.) Part of the pack of free software they handed out was Vista Ultimate Edition with SP1.
So they're handing it out and yet it isn't done? Yikes.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
No, in earnest, Vista has real issues. Sure, I like it, too: it's pretty, and me likes pretty. :) But, primarily, it's sluggish. Ever tried to delete JBOF (Just a Bunch of Files) in a dir? Say, a hundred or so rar files? It will keep busy for ever before it will finally delete them. That's because Vista is larded with mucho (stealth) DRM crapola. And no, my hardware is more than sufficient: quadcore at 3.2Ghz, 4G RAM, fast SATA II disks, 8800GTX, etc. File copying is horribly slow, too (same DRM shite). But it's stable, I'll give you that. But so was XP.
Attended the Microsoft Launch Wave 08 event today (Win2k8 Server, SQL Server 2k8, VS2k8) and as part of the 'freebie' software pack giveaway was supposed to be Vista SP1, but as there was an issue with the CDs, they just gave us Vista Ultimate with SP1 already integrated.
:)
Plus I got a couple of Kingston 1GB flashdrives, so it wasn't all a loss...
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
Yeah. Sometimes you just luck out. I've had the reverse problems before. Machines that XP throws a hissy fit at, but linux works great on.
Maybe you need to try a more conventional debian, and manually configure it. Its possible the autodetection just isn't having a fun time.
Conversely , kick back a bit and try it later. It could be a driver situation thats just-not-there-yet. Sometimes linux just takes a bit longer.
Good luck tho. Linux is worth it.
Now, as for vista. I'm *DAMN* hoping this service pack makes my laptop more same because god damn it this things got some unpleasant quirks sometimes. 1-2 minute epileptic fits when I plug in a monitor? XP never did THAT.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.