Free Vista SP1 Update for Microsoft Vista

Microsoft Vista SP1, Service Pack One, contains changes focused on addressing reliability and performance issues. With Vista SP1 update, it is supporting new types of hardware. Vista SP1 also make it easier for IT administrators to deploy and manage Windows Vista.

Here is the link Standalone Package is for PCs without internet access. This is a huge file and it is about 450 MB (5 Language package)
website: http://microsoft.com/downloads/
details.aspx?FamilyID=b0c7136d-5ebb-413b-89c9-cb3d06d12674

According to Microsoft, Service Packs are not intended to be a vehicle for releasing significant new features or functionality; however some existing components do gain slightly enhanced functionality in SP1 to support industry standards and new requirements.

Here are some facts about Microsoft Vista SP1 on its usability improvements, which may vary from PC to PC based on hardware. Generally after successful update on their PC, will experience some levels of benefit.

• Vista SP1 addresses issues many of the most common causes of crashes and hangs in Windows Vista, as reported by Windows Error Reporting. These include issues relating to Windows Calendar, Windows Media Player, and a number of drivers included with Windows Vista.
• Improves reliability by preventing data-loss while ejecting NTFS-formatted removable-media.
• Improves reliability of IPSec connections over IPv6 by ensuring by ensuring that all Neighbor Discovery RFC traffic is IPsec exempted.
• Improves certain problem scenarios where a driver goes to sleep with incomplete packet transmissions by ensuring the driver is given enough time to transmit or discard any outstanding packets before going to sleep.
• Improves wireless ad-hoc connection (computer-to-computer wireless connections) success rate.

Performance improvements vary from PC to PC based on hardware, environment, scenarios, and usage, so different customers will experience varying levels of benefits. About 20-25% of these improvements will be released separately via Windows update, prior to Windows Vista SP1.

More Vista SP1 reliability improvements:

• Improves the performance of browsing network file shares by consuming less bandwidth.
• Improves power consumption when the display is not changing by allowing the processor to remain in its sleep state which consumes less energy.
•  Improves power consumption and battery life by addressing an issue that causes a hard disk to continue spinning when it should spin down, in certain circumstances.
• Improves the speed of adding and extracting files to and from a compressed (zipped) folder. 
• Significantly improves the speed of moving a directory with many files underneath.
• Improves performance while copying files using BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service). 
• Speed improvement of about 25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine and 45% faster when copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system.
• Improves responsiveness when doing many kinds of file or media manipulations. For example, with Windows Vista today, copying files after deleting a different set of files can make the copy operation take longer than needed. In SP1, the file copy time is the same as if no files were initially deleted.
• Improves the copy progress estimation when copying files within Windows Explorer to about two seconds.
• Improves the time to read large images by approximately 50%.
• Addresses a problem that caused a delay of up to 5 minutes after boot with specific ReadyDrive capable hard drives.
• In specific scenarios, Microsoft Vista SP1 reduces the shutdown time by a few seconds by improving the Windows Vista utility designed to sync a mobile device.
• Improves the time to resume from standby for a certain class of USB Hubs by approximately 18%.
• Improves network connection scenarios by updating the logic that auto selects which network interface to use (e.g., should a laptop use wireless or wired networking when both are available).
• Improves the performance of the user login experience on corporate PCs outside of corporate environments (e.g., a corporate laptop taken home for the evening), making it comparable with PCs within the corporate environment.
• Reduces the time it takes to return to the user's session when using the Photo screensaver, making it comparable to other screensavers.
• Removes the delay that sometimes occurs when a user unlocks their PC.
• Improves overall media performance by reducing many glitches.
• The Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 includes a new compression algorithm for the RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) that helps reduce network bandwidth required to send bitmaps or images via RDP. The compression, which can be selected by administrators via Group Policy settings, is transparent to all RDP traffic, and typically reduces the size of the RDP stream by as much as 25-60%, based on preliminary test results.  This may cause some compatibility problem with older Terminal Servers.
  

To sum up, the "performance and power consumption improvements", promised that Vista would copy files locally 25% faster than before and copy files from aremote PC also running Vista SP1 50% faster. Vista SP1 will also readlarge images faster, and the bundled Internet Explorer 7 has been tweaked so that it renders JavaScript-intensive sites as fast asearlier versions of IE.  The Windows Vista SP1 install process clears the user-specific datathat is used by Windows to optimize performance, which may make thesystem feel less responsive immediately after install. As the customeruses their SP1 PC, the system will be retrained over the course of afew hours or days and will return to the previous level ofresponsiveness.

Security Improvements:

• Windows Vista SP1 includes all previously released Security Bulletin fixes which affect Windows Vista.
  
• SP1 now includes Secure Development Lifecycle process updates, where Microsoft identifies the root cause of each security bulletin and improves our internal tools to eliminate code patterns that could lead to future vulnerabilities.
• Service Pack 1 includes supported APIs by which third-party security and malicious software detection applications can work alongside Kernel Patch Protection on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista. These APIs have been designed to help security and non-security ISVs develop software that extends the functionality of the Windows kernel on 64-bit systems, in a documented and supported manner, and without disabling or weakening the protection offered by Kernel Patch Protection.
• Improves security on wired networks by enabling single sign on (SSO) for authenticated wired networks. The single sign on experience presents the user with a single point of credential entry rather than being double prompted for local and network logon.
  Introduction of a new PIN channel to securely collect smart card PINs via a PC. This new capability mitigates a number of attacks that today would require using an external PIN reader to prevent.  Enables smart cards that use biometric authentication instead of a PIN.
• Improves the OCSP (Online Certificate Status Protocol) implementation such that it can be configured to work with OCSP responses that are signed by trusted OCSP signers, separate from the issuer of the certificate being validated.

On the issue of Microsoft Vista security, the Vista SP1 includes all the Vista-related security updates issued from the operating system's debut through November 2007, as well as several more general, behind-the-scenes changes.One item in the pack's security improvements list, for example, hints at bug fixes that the company is not calling out as such and won't elucidate.

Microsoft is also making good on a deal it struck over a year ago with Symantec Corp., McAfee Inc. and the European Union, which complained before Vista launched that Microsoft was locking down access to the kernel in the 64-bit edition. In the fall of 2006, Symantec and McAfee objected to Microsoft's Kernel Patch Protection, also known as PatchGuard, and claimed that it stymied existing technologies, such as host-based intrusion prevention and tamper prevention. They, along with the EU, also accused Microsoft of using the technology to stifle competition in the security market.

Updated On: 08.04.03