What is in the Windows Vista Service Pack 1?

"Windows Vista SP1 is an update to Windows Vista that, along with improvements delivered to users via Windows Update, addresses feedback from our customers. While SP1 contains valuable updates to Windows, organizations don’t need to wait to deploy and can experience the improved security, management and deployment benefits of Windows Vista today.

In addition to previously released updates, SP1 will contain changes focused on addressing specific reliability and performance issues, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards. SP1 also continues to improve upon the IT administration experience. SP1 is not intended to be a vehicle for releasing new features; however some existing components do gain enhanced functionality in SP1."

What improvements are there to reliability in SP1?

"Windows Vista SP1 improves the reliability of Windows Vista in many areas. Thanks to the rich instrumentation capability of Windows Vista, we are able to understand the type of problems that our customers are experiencing (while respecting their personal information and privacy preferences).

Many of these crashes and blue screens stem from problems with 3rd party applications and drivers, so we are working with our partners to solve these problems together. Other problems occur entirely in Windows code so we are aggressively working to solve as many of these as possible too.

Some of these improvements are made available before SP1 in the August updates available via Windows Update and the Download Center.

What are some examples of additions to the service pack in the “Support for emerging technologies and standards” category? Throughout the lifetime of Windows, new hardware innovations occur and standards enter the marketplace. SP1 includes support for some of these new innovations, which are expected to become increasingly important in the coming years. For example:

-With SP1, Windows Vista can boot via EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) on an x64 machine

· SP1 supports ExFAT, a new file format that will be used in flash memory storage and consumer devices

- Support for SD Advanced DMA Support to improve transfer performance and decrease CPU utilization is part of SP1

- SP1 includes a series of new API's and software features to enable 3D application and game developers to make more complete and efficient use of the upcoming generation of graphics Direct3D 10.1 hardware

- Windows Vista SP1 includes SSTP (Secure Sockets Tunnel Protocol), a remote access VPN tunneling protocol that will be part of Microsoft’s RRAS (Routing and Remote Access Service) platform. SSTP helps provide full-network VPN remote access connections without some of the challenges that other VPN tunnels face traversing NAT, web proxies, and firewalls."

What are some examples of additions to the service pack in the “Improve management experience” category?

"SP1 improves the administration experience. For example:
-With Windows Vista SP1, BitLocker Drive Encryption has been enhanced to not only fully encrypt the entire Windows Vista volume but also any or all additional locally created data volumes. (Customers can now not only fully encrypt C: but also D: and E:)
-SP1 Improves printer management by addressing problems associated with printing to a local printer from within a Terminal Server session
-Network Diagnostics in Windows Vista SP1 will help users with the most common file sharing problems, in addition to basic problems already supported
-SP1 includes an update to Disk Defragmenter so administrators can control which volumes the disk defragmenter runs on."

What languages will Windows Vista SP1 include?

"SP1 is going to be released in two waves. The initial release of SP1 will include 5 languages (English, French, Spanish, German, and Japanese). A Service Pack containing all 36 of the languages (including the original 5) will be released about 3 months later."

What drivers are new in SP1?

"Windows Vista SP1 does not include new drivers. Rather, new drivers are delivered to users via Windows Update or directly from the driver vendor. There are two benefits to doing it this way:
-Drivers can be delivered when they are available, and not just with the service pack
-Via WU, drivers are only delivered to PCs which need those drivers, which help keep the size of the service pack from growing."

"The Beta of Windows Vista SP1 will be approximately 50 MB when delivered over Windows Update (to 32-bit PCs). We expect that will be the experience for the majority of our users. For IT Departments in large organizations, we also provide the “Standalone Package”. It will be significantly larger in size (about 1 GB for 32-bit), as it includes more just the changed files between Windows Vista Gold and Windows Vista SP1 as well as all 36 languages.

There are three changes to how the standalone Service Pack is built in Windows Vista which are responsible for its larger size. However, these changes also bring benefits to IT professionals.
-For the first time ever, the “standalone” package includes every language that Windows is released in. This increases the size but adds the benefit that the same package can be used to apply SP1 on any Windows Vista computer in an organization, regardless of language.
-Additionally, updating in Windows Vista is now “component based.” This means that if a file is changed, the entire component, including some files that may not been changed, is included in the standalone pack. This is a departure from previous versions of Windows, where the basic unit of updating was a file, not a component. A component is made up of multiple files."

Aug 12th, 2007. The Windows Vista SP1 is analysed in-depth here at apcmag.

In addition to desktop-search modifications, here’s a list of other fixes likely to make it in:

* Performance tweaks lessening the amount of time it takes to copy files and shut down Vista machines
* Improved transfer performance and decreased CPU utilization via support for SD Advanced Direct Memory Access (DMA)
* Support for ExFat, the Windows file format for flash memory storage and other consumer devices
* Improvements to BitLocker Drive Encryption to allow not just encryption of the whole Vista volume, but also locally created data volumes
* The ability to boot Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) on an x64 machine
* Improved success rate for firewalled MeetingSpace and Remote Assistance connections. Source.

There are reports that the Beta-1 of Vista SP1 would be first made available on August 8th at Microsoft Australia’s TechEd Conference in Australia this year.