Print this article | E-mail this article | Comment on this article

Microsoft Makes Vista Fix Packs Public

By BetaNews Staff, BetaNews

August 8, 2007, 1:24 PM

In a move that will likely only further confuse the situation surrounding Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Microsoft has posted for public download two updates that were released to beta testers last month. The patches improve Vista performance and reliability, along with the operating system's compatibility with drivers and hardware.

Some of the changes include better file copy performance, faster boot times, improved compatibility with newer graphics cards, and better performance in games with advanced visuals. The fixes are expected to be included in SP1, which is slated for public release next year. However, Microsoft has seemingly made them available early in response to criticism from customers surrounding Vista performance and reliability problems. Download the Vista Performance Update and Reliability Update from FileForum.

Add a Comment (36 Comments)

BetaNews reserves the right to remove any comment at any time for any reason. Please keep your responses appropriate and on topic. Foul language and personal attacks will not be tolerated.

By ogman

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 5:34 PM

Still no fix for the "calculating time remaining" bug. I hope they fix that in SP1.

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 7:50 PM

They fixed it on the performance and compatibility update. (at least its working on mine.) and its stated in the release notes as well.

Score: 0

By ogman

edited Aug 10, 2007 - 9:10 AM

Glad it worked out for you. Didn't fix it here, though.

It did fix some issues. Pictures and thumbnails display a lot faster.

Release notes? Since when do release notes fix anything?

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Aug 10, 2007 - 2:09 PM

I meant that its stated in the release notes that it will fix the problem.

Score: 0

By alphatrigon

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 2:50 PM

MS always said they would do this, but many did not care to actually listen or believe them, lol. So it should not be confusing. Updates are great.

And sleep/hibernation issues are a thing of hardware/mobo/atx psu, etc

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 2:36 PM

The new updates are great, speed has definitely improved and sleep is a much better transition from touch to wake. It has improved 100%

copying files still seems a bit faster on xp though. (only by about a min or so though so not a big deal)

Xp Machine is Athlon X2 64 5200 1 gig of ram ddr2 800 6400

Vista machine is core 2 duo 2 (1.6) 2 gb of ram ddr2 6400

Score: 0

By lonechicken

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 11:58 AM

Installed it last night. Sleep still does not work. Hibernate does (but that's always worked for me when I upgraded to Vista).

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 1:49 PM

Out of curiosity, what motherboard/bios rev are you running on?

Score: 0

By lonechicken

edited Aug 9, 2007 - 3:24 PM

Asus p5b deluxe wifi, and an Asus P5kc. Both are the current revision, and latest bios. The p5b was an upgrade from XP Pro to Vista Ultimate. The P5KC was a new machine with a fresh Vista Ultimate install. "Standby" worked perfectly on the upgraded one back during XP.

I thought it might be things like video cards or keyboard or other hardware drivers, but they're all the latest. My sleep problem is with waking up from it. The video never comes back. I've googled and saw that one of the other sleep issues is the "going to sleep but not staying asleep" problem. So I guess there are a few different problems with it.

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

edited Aug 9, 2007 - 3:27 PM

Using the latest Nvidia beta drivers?

These fixed the sleep issues for me. I have a P5B deluxe and an 8800 320MB

Score: 0

By lonechicken

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 9:19 PM

Sucks for me. I have an 8800 GTS (640) so that's essentially the same card. The latest drivers don't do it for me. The other machine is an older ATI, so it must not be the only issue.

Score: 0

By georgeio

edited Aug 9, 2007 - 3:26 AM

this e/mail wont go in advance because/http/www/u
may read it by chance not advance pc/tec[win/asta?

Score: 0

By wreckedchevy

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 1:38 AM

i installed these updates on my vista home prem x64 and my hd's are flying any file access is wicked faster than it was, unzipping, copying erasing... so far i'm pleased

Score: 0

By frankwick

posted Aug 8, 2007 - 4:55 PM

Will these updates become part of windows Update? These are HUGE downloads compared to the normal monthly cycle.

Score: 0

By rseiler

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 1:48 AM

Yes, very likely next Tuesday. But these standalones really aren't "huge," being only about 12MB or so combined. I've seen some updates in WU that large, and I expect these to be the same size there anyway.

Score: 0

By wreckedchevy

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 10:33 AM

i agree took exploder longer to validate windows then it it did to actually download the files

Score: 0

By WeezulDK

posted Aug 8, 2007 - 4:05 PM

Is it me or am I right in saying that a lot of these issues should have been fixed during beta before release????

Score: 0

By frankwick

posted Aug 8, 2007 - 4:54 PM

In a perfect world, yes. However, operating systems are complex and no OS will ever be bug free. There will always be items discovered and new configurations that didn't exist during beta testing.

Score: 0

By WeezulDK

posted Aug 8, 2007 - 4:58 PM

Agreed, but some of those so called "newly discovered" bugs are things that are holdovers from Beta that were never addressed, like the inordinately long time to calculate file copy/move operations before it actually DID the operation...

Score: 0

By frankwick

posted Aug 8, 2007 - 5:07 PM

MS would argue that was a "performance improvement" and not really a bug that needed fixed in beta.

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Aug 8, 2007 - 5:40 PM

The bug didn't exist in any other OS MS has made, it was wide spread and it seems like a dealbreaker to taking Vista seriously.

Score: 0

By computershack

edited Aug 8, 2007 - 9:29 PM

If you think that's bad, you should see what Linus Torvalds has recently said about atime which is part of the Linux kernel.

"Atime updates are by far the biggest IO performance deficiency that Linux has today. Getting rid of atime updates would give us more everyday Linux performance than all the pagecache speedups of the past 10 years, _combined_. It's also perhaps the most stupid Unix design idea of all times. Unix is really nice and well done, but think about this a bit: 'For every file that is read from the disk, lets do a ... write to the disk! And, for every file that is already cached and which we read from the cache ... do a write to the disk!'"

Score: 0

By computershack

edited Aug 8, 2007 - 9:23 PM

Personally I'm not trying to run Vista on a 486 with 4MB RAM so I didn't notice..

And Vista isn't the same as previous OSes on many levels such as Kernel accessibility.

Score: 0

By Tenoq

posted Aug 8, 2007 - 11:18 PM

No, but if you try running Vista on anything less than a Core 2 with 2GB of RAM you'll notice. It's performance is atrocious, even compared to Microsoft's own XP SP2.

Score: 0

By Adrian79

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 10:37 PM

ummm i have pentium D dual core 3.4ghz, 2gigs ddr... works GREAT! no need for "CORE" on my rig :-)

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Aug 8, 2007 - 6:29 PM

Because MS (I believe) changed the way that Vista uses diskspace compared to previous versions.

Score: 0

By GoodThings2Life

posted Aug 8, 2007 - 2:38 PM

The only confusion with Service Pack 1 is the media outlets deciding to go into some panic about if and when SP1 will be released to an official beta status.

Good grief, get a clue here folks. It's a hotfix for crying out loud! You download. You install. Your computer works better. End of story.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Aug 8, 2007 - 2:32 PM

In a move that will likely only further confuse the situation surrounding Windows Vista Service Pack 1

How so?

Microsoft releases patch, folks can download patch or wait for it to hit Windows Update. Folks can expect the patch to be included in the next SP. This is the way it has been for years.

Again, how is this any different?

That they are "early"? According to whom? Patches have been released prior to service packs as long as service packs have been around.

Looks like someone (I'm looking at *you*, "BetaNews Staff")is trying for a "ZOMG!! M$ is teh scared!" reaction...

Score: 0

By ogman

posted Aug 8, 2007 - 11:31 PM

LOL! Does it hurt when you stretch that much?

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 9:35 AM

Nah. I follow a rigorous regimen of stretching exercises before posting. :p

Score: 0

By lonechicken

posted Aug 8, 2007 - 2:20 PM

How's the fix to get Sleep functionality to work reliably for every computer coming? And the clicking around 10 times to get to the place to turn certain soundcard ports off and on?

I should really get in on these betas.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Aug 8, 2007 - 2:34 PM

The hibernation issues are part of the reliability pack.

I have no idea what you're talking about regarding ports. I can get to my mixer (to enable or disable Mic, etc) with 3. (Right click on speaker icon in systray, select mixer, mute or unmute mic).

Score: 0

By lonechicken

edited Aug 8, 2007 - 2:42 PM

Thanks. I wasn't sure if that meant just the actual hibernation mode or Sleep/hybrid sleep as well.

I was exaggerating, but I think it's 1) right-click, 2) select mixer, 3) select speaker levels 4) a tab, 5) then mute/unmute line in or one of the others.

It used to be 3 clicks on XP for SoundMax's mixer (or Creative) instead of the one that comes with Vista.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Aug 8, 2007 - 3:44 PM

;) I'm using SoundMax's Vista drivers. :p

Still, on the laptop my buddy uses to DJ, I could have sworn it was pretty much the same.

Score: 0

By lonechicken

posted Aug 8, 2007 - 8:49 PM

Okay, I give up. Where do I download the Soundmax mixer for Vista? I have the latest SoundMax driver installed, but there's no app that comes with it like a mixer.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 1:48 PM

I'll have to check again, but I believe it came with the nForce platform driver download direct from the NVIDIA driver website.

The PC in question has an Asus M2NPV-VM logic board with the ADI AD1986A audio chipset.

Give it a try and see what happens. Again, the drivers I used were downloaded directly from NVIDIA and were listed, if I recall correctly, as the nForce 430/510 platform drivers for Vista 32-bit.

Score: 0

Jul 7 - 10:53 AM ET Apple cuts price of MacBook Air with SSD by $500

Jul 3 - 6:45 PM ET Netflix box by Roku to get more content providers

Jul 3 - 6:30 PM ET US Justice Dept. sued for info on cellular tracking practices

Jul 3 - 6:27 PM ET Next Patch Tuesday has few security updates, big Vista reliability fix

Jul 3 - 5:49 PM ET BlackBerry Pearl users can test voice input for Google Maps

Jul 3 - 5:30 PM ET Adobe pushes its Flash 10 beta 2 refresh

Jul 3 - 4:39 PM ET Nokia and InterDigital start to disassemble their running feud

Jul 3 - 4:34 PM ET Do-it-yourself phone manufacturer declares its independence tomorrow

Jul 3 - 4:16 PM ET Study: US broadband access up overall, but down among the poor

Jul 3 - 3:54 PM ET Beta test a portable Web browsing device