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Atty
July 9th, 2007, 01:37 PM
Microsoft plans numerous fixes including an update to ReadyBoost


Microsoft officially launched Windows Vista for volume licensing on November 30. The company also simultaneously launched Office 2007 giving Microsoft a 1-2 punch in the realm of operating systems and productivity suites.

"These are game-changing products," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the launch. "It’s an incredible step forward for business computing in a year of unprecedented innovation from Microsoft. We expect that more than 200 million people will be using at least one of these products by the end of 2007."

Microsoft followed up with the retail launch of both products two months later on January 30. Both software products were made available in over 70 countries and over 40,000 retail locations.

Windows Vista is not even a year old, but Microsoft is already orchestrating the launch of Service Pack 1 (SP1) Beta 1 for the week of July 16. Many companies will not even touch a new Microsoft operating system until the first service pack is released, so the quick rollout of SP1 isn't totally unexpected.

According to ZDNET's Mary Jo Foley, SP1 will RTM in November after just four months of testing. Microsoft will also release Windows Server 2008 at the same time.

Expected updates/fixes included with SP1 will be a revised Desktop Search, faster file copying and shutdown speeds, support for SD Advanced Direct Memory Access, enhancements to BitLocker Drive Encryption and Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) support on x64 machines.

There will also be changes made to Windows ReadyBoost. There have been numerous complaints around the web concerning ReadyBoost and resuming from S3/S4 sleep. Sluggish performance on resume can be attributed to numerous writes to 'Readyboost.sfcache' on the ReadyBoost storage device.

According to Microsoft’s Robert Hensing, "[ReadyBoost] uses an AES 128 key that is generated once per OS start (the data in the file on the thumb drive is encrypted with this key) . . . the key isn't persisted anywhere (i.e. it lives in memory only) and so apparently when you sleep / hibernate - the key goes bye bye and thus you need to rebuild your 2GB ReadyBoost cache on your USB disk when you resume again."

Hensing continues, "Vista realizes that it needs to regenerate the ReadyBoost cache as soon as it wakes up and loads the USB drivers and realizes the ReadyBoost drive is plugged in and it starts helpfully doing this as soon as it can . . . ya know - while the OS is trying to page all that memory back into my 2GB of system RAM as well and generally restore the OS to a working state . . . sigh . . ."

The changes made to ReadyBoost in SP1 will ensure that cache data is reused during S3/S4 sleep so that 'Readyboost.sfcache' is not repopulated on resume.
:-)

Warsaw
July 9th, 2007, 02:10 PM
If an operating system needs a service pack a month or so after release, it wasn't finished.

Amit
July 9th, 2007, 02:24 PM
Notice how it was launched January and it is now July?

Mr Buckshot
July 9th, 2007, 04:38 PM
Sweet, a service pack is really necessary as of now like with any new OS.

jahrain
July 9th, 2007, 04:56 PM
I thought I was once again just experiencing "User Error" as I was told when I was having some of these problems addressed. Especially with ready boost. Plus the time it takes to, not just copy, but even move a set of files from one folder to another was just ridiculously long. In xp, when bunk relocating files, it was done in nearly an split second, even for gigs of data. I also thought I was the only one who has to wait 10 minutes for my pc to shut down.

Amit
July 9th, 2007, 05:48 PM
Really.....I find Vista much faster for everything, XP was just plain slow.

Halo2Vista
July 9th, 2007, 06:35 PM
Really.....I find Vista much faster for everything, XP was just plain slow.

i agree and the programs to me are much easier to find and use. but if those son of a bitchs are going to do sp1 then they will also go the path XP did with different service packs, so i'll just wait till the second one because the first is bound to still have bugs and viruses.

legionaire45
July 9th, 2007, 08:44 PM
Anything non-graphics related seems to be faster on Vista. Then again, I did go from 1.5 to 4 gigs of ram between XP and Vista xD.

Zeph
July 9th, 2007, 09:08 PM
Notice how it was launched January and it is now July?
Notice how it was pressed Gold last September and it is now July?

Warsaw
July 9th, 2007, 09:41 PM
Still too short of a time span. Either way, it shouldn't need a service pack every 6 months.

Zeph
July 9th, 2007, 09:54 PM
Still too short of a time span. Either way, it shouldn't need a service pack every 6 months.

You do know March was four months ago and it will still be quite some time before Vista SP1 is out, right?

Warsaw
July 9th, 2007, 09:55 PM
January to June is six months. Someone said January and I was going by that. What you're getting at is beside the point.

Zeph
July 9th, 2007, 10:06 PM
January to June is six months. Someone said January and I was going by that. What you're getting at is beside the point.

No, it's exactly the point. You as a retail consumer might have only been able to get Vista at the end of January, but that doesn't mean it was the exact instant it was finished. You're almost four months behind the part of the market MS is looking to please the most. Sure the home user is important, as that's how the best impressions are made for decisions at the workplace, but offices with hundreds and perhaps thousands of computers are where Microsoft is looking with this. Vista hit its golden build in September and that's the point work 'officially' began on Fuji. You honestly dont think Bungie will stop working on Halo 3 the 23rd of September do you?

Warsaw
July 10th, 2007, 06:19 PM
Yes I do, because it has to have time to go gold and be copied and shipped to stores all over the country.

And I yield to your argument. I don't even have Vista yet :downs:.

Zeph
July 10th, 2007, 07:22 PM
Yes I do, because it has to have time to go gold and be copied and shipped to stores all over the country.

And I yield to your argument. I don't even have Vista yet :downs:.

You really should, it's an amazing improvement over XP.

Abdurahman
July 10th, 2007, 09:12 PM
It sure is. Even without a service pack, Vista has been many times than XP for me.

Reaper Man
July 10th, 2007, 09:23 PM
You really should, it's an amazing improvement over XP.
Bah, why would I want a so-called next gen OS when the only version with shit all support is the 32-bit version. Oh yes, next gen indeed. macplz

SMASH
July 10th, 2007, 09:36 PM
Bah, why would I want a so-called next gen OS when the only version with shit all support is the 32-bit version. Oh yes, next gen indeed. macplz

I have the 64 bit and it's absolutely great, never had any problems...

Warsaw
July 10th, 2007, 11:33 PM
I just bought Windows XP last year (Pro upgrade from Windows 2000 Pro) and see no reason to upgrade at the present time or in the foreseeable future. Upgrading to Vista would also mean basically building a new PC as well, which is not something I want to spend money on or have any interest in at the moment.