kotarski.co.uk

You may be aware that Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) has recently been released.

SP1 is intended to fix many problems with the initial release of Vista. There are 184 Hotfixes and Security Updates in SP1 there are also performance improvements and the introduction of new functionality such as full support for the latest IEEE draft of 802.11n wireless networking. Many of the updates are for stability.

If you have several machines to update it may be worth downloading the full update this is a hefty 726MB otherwise just let Windows Update do the job.

There are some problems which you should know about before updating. These fall into these categories:

1. Some device drivers stop working after installing SP1.
   The advice is to install the latest drivers for your hardware before you install Windows Vista SP1. More detail can be found here .

2. Vista SP1 introduces compatibility problems which cause some programs to fail.
   A few programs have problems with SP1 the only ones that most people might come across are Zone Alarm Security Suite and Bitdefender AV. More details here .

3. A pre-requisite update (KB937287) triggers endless reboots on some machines.
   Knowledge base article KB949358 has details on how to solve this problem if you are affected.

4. Sound may no longer work after SP1.
   Knowledge base article KB948481 has detailed instructions on how to overcome this problem.

5. Some systems crash when attempting to wake up from sleep mode.

6. Deeply technical stuff that few people other than System Administrators are likely to care about.
   In particular Vista SP1 uninstalls GPMC (Group Policy Management Console) without replacing it. A new package of Remote Server Administration Tools known as RSAT replaces GPMC.

None of these problems are show stoppers but would be pretty irritating if they happen to you. Microsoft has several Knowledge Base articles which cover the different problems.

Vista has a reputation for being slow on file copy operations some informal benchmarking by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes show some marked improvements .

For those not planning to move to Vista yet but need new hardware Windows XP will only be available to purchase until 30 June 2008 so get those orders in soon.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form

Name

Email

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (Registered users only)

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment