# Just installed Windows Vista Service Pack 1



## Pinion413 (Oct 21, 2007)

In case anyone's interested in this upcoming release, I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts. I just completed installing the Release Candidate "Refresh" version of SP1 for Windows Vista x64 (Ultimate). I got bored, so decided to back up my OS drive and give the RC a go. :grin:

My overall impressions so far are very positive. No, it doesn't seem to be hogging any less RAM, but overall the OS does seem to be a bit more responsive. They seem to have tweaked a lot of little things here and there. I believe that the kernel now is the same that is shipping in Windows 2008, versus it sharing 2003's (like XP shares 2000's). Most notably (to me anyway) is the fact that my #1 hard drive isn't accessing all of the time anymore. One of my biggest gripes with Vista was the fact that it almost seemed to thrash the main hard disk constantly.

As for program compatibility, I haven't delved into much just yet, but they've (all companies) been getting better at getting things to run more stably with various updates.

I very much like what I see here. This may be enough to finally get some better reviews out there of this OS and perhaps increase adoption. As I've said elsewhere, I'm not a Microsoft fan-boy by any stretch. In the case of this, I adopted early (for some reason) and have been dreading all along that this would turn into Windows ME #2. With this pending update, my fears are finally beginning to subside. 

The final version is due out for everyone by the end of Q1 2008. Anyone can also try the RC version, but it has to be completely uninstalled when the final version is released.

This Machine's Quick Specs (if anyone cares)

AMD Opteron 180 Dual-Core
2GB OCZ Platinum DDR-400
2.2TB Hard Disk Space
Windows XP Professional SP2 x86 and Windows Vista Ultimate x64 (Dual-Boot)


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## smiddy (Apr 5, 2006)

Thanks for sharing. Out of curiosity, since I intend to build a HTPC soon and use Vista Ultimate, are there any issues between 32 bit and 64 bit drivers that I should be aware of?


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## funhouse69 (Mar 26, 2007)

smiddy said:


> Thanks for sharing. Out of curiosity, since I intend to build a HTPC soon and use Vista Ultimate, are there any issues between 32 bit and 64 bit drivers that I should be aware of?


If you are going to choose you should probably stick with 32 bit - 64 bit still has a lot of driver issues and not as much support. This also holds true for almost any OS at this point. Even in the Data Center I work in they won't touch any 64 Bit Windows Based OS others of course are fine


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## smiddy (Apr 5, 2006)

funhouse69 said:


> If you are going to choose you should probably stick with 32 bit - 64 bit still has a lot of driver issues and not as much support. This also holds true for almost any OS at this point. Even in the Data Center I work in they won't touch any 64 Bit Windows Based OS others of course are fine


Thanks! This is what I figured too, but I wanted to check with some experts here.


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## Greg Alsobrook (Apr 2, 2007)

before my wife and I wised up and got macs.... she had a brand new HP laptop with Vista Ultimate 64-bit... ipod, iphone and itunes did not work properly AT ALL... so buyer beware...


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## MeSue (Oct 7, 2007)

Pinion413 said:


> I just completed installing the Release Candidate "Refresh" version of SP1 for Windows Vista x64 (Ultimate). I got bored, so decided to back up my OS drive and give the RC a go. :grin:


Did you have SP1 installed before you did the refresh?

I was having problems where my computer would hang 50% of the time at boot. Then on Christmas Eve I had to do some troubleshooting with Logitech over my Harmony remote and they had me disable my anti-virus and firewall. By the time I got off the phone with them, I was running late, so I quickly shut down and forgot to re-enable the security. We left to visit family overnight. When I came home Christmas night, my computer was on, with no security, and acting very strangely. Event viewer showed the computer started at 1:24 AM Christmas morning when no one was home. Tried restoring a backup and still had problems. Finally decided to bite the bullet and clean install Vista. Installed SP1 RC at that time.

SP1 worked fine for about a week and then all of a sudden, after a routine reboot, my onboard NIC went haywire--Internet and network stopped working. The only solution I found was to remove the Microsoft driver and install a beta driver from the motherboard mfr. That got my connections back, but my network transfer speeds were horribly slow. I had just gotten a HP Mediasmart server and had gigs and gigs of files I needed to copy to it. I eventually just found an old PCI NIC card and installed that and it's working. A few days later the "refresh" version came out. I'm tempted to try it and see if it solves the problem with my onboard NIC, but OTOH I should probably leave well enough alone.

Do you have a network? If so, how are your transfer speeds?


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## Pinion413 (Oct 21, 2007)

funhouse69 said:


> If you are going to choose you should probably stick with 32 bit - 64 bit still has a lot of driver issues and not as much support. This also holds true for almost any OS at this point. Even in the Data Center I work in they won't touch any 64 Bit Windows Based OS others of course are fine


Yeah, I'll agree with that, but only to a point. As for what I have here, the motherboard chipset itself (nForce 4 SLI), all drives and disks, the Creative Audigy 2 Platinum eX card, the Epson RX595 All-in-one printer, and the eVGA 512MB 8600GT video card all have drivers and work great in Vista x64. There isn't a component in my rig that isn't supported.

As for older products, that's another story. From what I have been seeing though, and for what it's worth, driver support for Vista x64 has been much improved over the 64-bit versions of XP. And, since it's had a year to breathe, pretty much every program that I did have issues with when the OS launched have either been updated and now work, or just work thanks to updates to the OS (before I installed this Service Pack).

My reasons for buying Vista Ultimate 64 were mainly these two;

Virtually every consumer PC processor out there now supports x64. I wanted to make sure I had an OS running that would take advantage of that. (I had honestly thought that manufacturers realized this and would have bundled it accordingly. Instead, most PC's are still bundled with x86 Vista, probably for driver reasons as pre-builts tend to have lower grade components, and I'm sure whatever companies produce them only have the resources to code drivers for 32-bit/x86 environments, and once you have x86 XP drivers, I'm sure the port to Vista isn't that difficult.  )

As time goes on, at some point, things _will_ migrate to 64-bit. I like the latest computer that I've built and plan to keep it much longer than my previous builds. I wanted to be all set as far as supporting newer programs for awhile.


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## Pinion413 (Oct 21, 2007)

smiddy said:


> Thanks for sharing. Out of curiosity, since I intend to build a HTPC soon and use Vista Ultimate, are there any issues between 32 bit and 64 bit drivers that I should be aware of?


It all depends on what you want to do. You can look at the components first before you build and see if they have x64 drivers. Like I said above, everything I have in my rig works just fine.

The only real issues aside from that could really be software, but if you're running up-to-date stuff, it should be fine, and if not, that's what "Compatibility Mode" is for (which goes all the way back to Windows 95 to try to help).

Either way, you should be fine. x86 is the more "mainstream" choice for now. x64 _should_ be down the road.


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## Pinion413 (Oct 21, 2007)

MeSue said:


> Did you have SP1 installed before you did the refresh?


No, I did not. I was putting it off until the official, but got fidgety and couldn't wait any longer. :grin:



MeSue said:


> I was having problems where my computer would hang 50% of the time at boot. Then on Christmas Eve I had to do some troubleshooting with Logitech over my Harmony remote and they had me disable my anti-virus and firewall. By the time I got off the phone with them, I was running late, so I quickly shut down and forgot to re-enable the security. We left to visit family overnight. When I came home Christmas night, my computer was on, with no security, and acting very strangely. Event viewer showed the computer started at 1:24 AM Christmas morning when no one was home. Tried restoring a backup and still had problems. Finally decided to bite the bullet and clean install Vista. Installed SP1 RC at that time.
> 
> SP1 worked fine for about a week and then all of a sudden, after a routine reboot, my onboard NIC went haywire--Internet and network stopped working. The only solution I found was to remove the Microsoft driver and install a beta driver from the motherboard mfr. That got my connections back, but my network transfer speeds were horribly slow. I had just gotten a HP Mediasmart server and had gigs and gigs of files I needed to copy to it. I eventually just found an old PCI NIC card and installed that and it's working. A few days later the "refresh" version came out. I'm tempted to try it and see if it solves the problem with my onboard NIC, but OTOH I should probably leave well enough alone.
> 
> Do you have a network? If so, how are your transfer speeds?


I'm sorry to hear that.

I don't seem to be having any issues here. Internet works 100%. Transfer rates across the network (PC's directly wired into a D-Link Wireless Router) are as they were before the SP, and the same as XP still is. The one onboard NIC I use on this board is nVidia, 10/100/1000. The other (Marvell I believe) is disabled in the BIOS since I don't use it.

You can always uninstall the service pack you have on there now. Follow the instructions to do it, and once it has rebooted you need to let it run for a good hour to let Vista refresh itself. This allows it to truly finish pulling everything back out of the registry and whatnot.

If you want to try the "Refresh", it is available publicly. If you'd rather not risk it, the RTM version should be out by the end of March at the latest.


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## kappen (Apr 5, 2007)

AirRocker said:


> before my wife and I wised up and got macs.... she had a brand new HP laptop with Vista Ultimate 64-bit... ipod, iphone and itunes did not work properly AT ALL... so buyer beware...


Yeah it took a while for apple to fix their software but they did and it works now.


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## Greg Alsobrook (Apr 2, 2007)

kappen said:


> Yeah it took a while for apple to fix their software but they did and it works now.


hmm... you are correct... it does show support for 64bit versions now on the itunes download page...


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## kevinwmsn (Aug 19, 2006)

You also need a 64 bit version of the OS to see all of the 4 Gig or higher of RAM. 32 bit version of windows will only see around 3.2 Gigs of RAM.


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## Pinion413 (Oct 21, 2007)

kevinwmsn said:


> You also need a 64 bit version of the OS to see all of the 4 Gig or higher of RAM. 32 bit version of windows will only see around 3.2 Gigs of RAM.


Ahh, yes. Good point. 32-bit versions of Windows from 2000 up have a lot of trouble addressing RAM over 2GB. Basically, it may be able to see it, but not necessarily use it.


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## JM Anthony (Nov 16, 2003)

smiddy said:


> Thanks for sharing. Out of curiosity, since I intend to build a HTPC soon and use Vista Ultimate, are there any issues between 32 bit and 64 bit drivers that I should be aware of?


My HTPC is running ultimate 32 bit and it works great. The media center capabilities built into Vista are much better than the MCE version of XP.

Good luck with your build.

John


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