Windows Vista SP1

[Suka]

Ok, lets start with some ground rules. Try not to make this a thread to bash Vista around, i would just like to start a discussion about the new service pack.

It officially got pushed out the door today so I assume everyone here who runs Vista has tried it on?
It took a fair old while for it to download and install but i got there in the end. Its left me with about just over 10GB of extra HDD space and so far has given my Laptop a significant performance boost.

So anyone else? Performance? Bugs?

For the record my Laptop is an Acer Aspire, Intel Centrino Duo @ 1.67GHz per core, 1GB ram and 120gb HDD running Vista Home Premium.

Side note: With the performance boost i decided to try out IE8 beta 1. I switched from IE7 to Firefox because it was so slow and crashed all the time. IE8 seems very stable, even at beta 1, and runs smoothly, only downside is that it butchers this website, however it does come with the ability to emulate IE7 so i can get around that.

[ZeTurbo]

Ok, lets start with some ground rules. Try not to make this a thread to bash Vista around, i would just like to start a discussion about the new service pack.

It officially got pushed out the door today so I assume everyone here who runs Vista has tried it on?
It took a fair old while for it to download and install but i got there in the end. Its left me with about just over 10GB of extra HDD space and so far has given my Laptop a significant performance boost.

So anyone else? Performance? Bugs?

For the record my Laptop is an Acer Aspire, Intel Centrino Duo @ 1.67GHz per core, 1GB ram and 120gb HDD running Vista Home Premium.

Side note: With the performance boost i decided to try out IE8 beta 1. I switched from IE7 to Firefox because it was so slow and crashed all the time. IE8 seems very stable, even at beta 1, and runs smoothly, only downside is that it butchers this website, however it does come with the ability to emulate IE7 so i can get around that.

You have 1gb of ram to run Vista? You are a courageous man...

[aiasib]

and so the bashing begins....

[blackcat77]

I downloaded it this afternoon. First attempt to install failed so I shut off all the un-necessary garbage I usually have running and tried again. It ended with an abnormal termination but I clicked on start Windows normally and everything loaded fine, it finished the installation and so far so good. I don't notice any difference in performance but I wasn't really expecting any.

And, for the record, I got Vista on day one and like it. I had to reformat/reinstall about a month ago but that seems to be the norm for every OS I've ever had. I also have it on my wife's home office computer and a laptop. They're also doing fine.

[pimento]

I have it on my laptop (Vista Business, Toshiba A6, 2GB RAM, 1.83 C2D, 80GB) but I've not had a chance to load it yet. I'll give it a go later... off to the pub shortly!

Edit: According to an MS posting, it seems I'm a few driver versions short of a Windows Update and Toshiba don't have updated drivers on their sites. Oh well.. it can wait until some other time.

[Zytek_Fan]

Works pretty well. RAM usage is on the high side, but RAM is cheap enough these days to where it doesn't matter. 2GB is indeed a must.

If you disable the prefetcher (pretty much a cache in your RAM of your most used applications, so they will "load faster"), RAM usage will drop like a rock

Not a huge noticeable difference from Vista to Vista SP1. A little bit of more hardware optimizations maybe, but nothing really major. SP1 is basically some tweaks to fix whatever issues there were.

[fisetdavid26]

RAM usage dropped from 58% used at idle to about 44%. Nice.

Major problem though, my sound card doesn't seem to like SP1 very much. X-Fi sound cards always had issues with Vista, but now it's awful. What's strange is that it worked fine with Beta and Release Candidate versions of SP1, but doesn't actually work properly with the RTM version. I installed the newer drivers this morning off Creative's website, and the card just stops working randomly.

Anybody has a X-Fi or the same problem?

[Zytek_Fan]

RAM usage dropped from 58% used at idle to about 44%. Nice.

Major problem though, my sound card doesn't seem to like SP1 very much. X-Fi sound cards always had issues with Vista, but now it's awful. What's strange is that it worked fine with Beta and Release Candidate versions of SP1, but doesn't actually work properly with the RTM version. I installed the newer drivers this morning off Creative's website, and the card just stops working randomly.

Anybody has a X-Fi or the same problem?

Creative is notorious for bad drivers.

What I would do is grab the Auzentech X-Fi Prelude. It's still X-Fi, but Auzentech does their own drivers for it.

Also, the Asus Xonar is a good choice.

[fisetdavid26]

Creative is notorious for bad drivers.

What I would do is grab the Auzentech X-Fi Prelude. It's still X-Fi, but Auzentech does their own drivers for it.

Also, the Asus Xonar is a good choice.

Yeah, but that involves buying another one, and I'm a bit upset I paid $180 for it and it doesn't work. For now it seems alright, hopefully it won't stop working again.

[Suka]

Yeah, but that involves buying another one, and I'm a bit upset I paid $180 for it and it doesn't work. For now it seems alright, hopefully it won't stop working again.

What machine do you have? There is an Irish Microsoft MVP who had problems with his X-Fi card in his Dell. Apparently Dell reproduced the problem and are working with Creative and nVidia on a solution.

[Zytek_Fan]

Yeah, but that involves buying another one, and I'm a bit upset I paid $180 for it and it doesn't work. For now it seems alright, hopefully it won't stop working again.

You could put it up for sale, and probably get most of your money back...

[fisetdavid26]

You could put it up for sale, and probably get most of your money back...

I bought it in Summer '06, I doubt I'll get all my money back... but I can try. I'll see.