One month after delaying the release of Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) due to a servicing stack update KB937287, the prerequisite update part of the February 2008 monthly bulletin that sparked a snafu that either rendered PCs unbootable or sent PCs to a continuous reboot, it is now finally available both in retail stores and via the Windows Update website. It will be incorporated to the Windows Update service in the middle of next month.

Windows Vista SP1 was released to manufacturing on the 4th of February and were made available to MSDN subscribed on the 15th of February. It contains major changes focused on addressing specific reliability and performance issues, supporting new types of hardware and adding support for several emerging standards.

Vista SP1 has new features that were not originally available in the RTM release:

exFAT File System - First introduced in Micrsoft Windows Embedded CE 6.0, the Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) is a proprietary file system suited for flash drive where it can be used where the NTFS file system is not a feasible solution due to the data structure overhead.

The major advantages are that drives that are formatted under the exFAT file system can the following:

1. A file size up to as much as 16 EB! FAT32 file systems can only have file sizes up to 4 GB with volume sizes up to 2 TB.
2. Cluster sizes up to as much as 32 MB. FAT32 is limited to 32 KB.
3. The introduction of the free space bitmap improves free space allocation performance as well as having more than 1,000 files in a single directory.
4. Transaction-Safe FAT File System support. Windows CE activation is a option for those who would want to use their devices on the go.

The major disadvantages compared to previous FAT file systems include:

1. Devices using exFAT will no longer be able to use Windows Vista's ReadyBoost capability.
2. eXFAT is not available in previous versions of Micrsoft Windows - even Windows Vista without a service pack.
3. exFAT is also not available as an open source implementation.
4. Access control lists is not yet supported under Windows Vista SP1.
5. Lastly, the licensing status for the exFAT file system is unclear. The software giant has previous patented portions of the FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 file systems.
6. Like the FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 file systems that date range is 1 January 1980 to 31 December 2107.

Administration - Windows Vista SP1 also has improved networking diagnosis tool, restrictions to disk defragmentation in certain volumes. Most specifically in the past versions of Windows, dating all the way back to Windows 95, the disk defragmentation feature was restricted to a specific volume whatever it's on a another drive or a partition.

Reliability and Performance - With a better ability to upgrade from Windows 2000 or Windows XP, Vista SP1 has new graphics cards and external laptop displays for some printer drivers, sleep mode as well as printing in Terminal Service sessions. Improvements have been made to copying and extracting files, resumption from hibernation mode while domain-joined PCs are offline as well as improvements to Internet Explorer 7, battery life in laptops and notebook PCs, logon experience as well as browsing network file shares.

Security - Vista SP1 also features new APIs for the Windows Scurity Center and kernel patch protection (64-bit), signing of RPD files, multifactor authentication for Bitlocker (Trusted Platform Module + USB stick + PIN). With this improvement Bitlocker can now encrypt volumes other than the system volume.

Other new features include the following: Secure Digital Advanced Direct Memory Access (SDADMA) improvement in transfer performance, the ability to network boot using EFI on 64-bit operating systems, Direct3D 10.1 and Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP).


Please note that there is only one downside when installing Vista SP1 that this issue only affects Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Enterprise users. When you install Vista SP1, the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) gets removed from the computer and it will be replaced by an updated downloadable version, in which it will be available from the Microsoft website soon.


For the complete list of changes in Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1, read the release notes from the Mirosoft Windows Vista TechCenter page: [link]

If you use Windows Vista, how did the installation of Service Pack 1 go and how well has it affected any of the hardware or software installed on your computer?


Download Windows Vista SP1 Five Language Pack (32-bit): [link]
Download Windows Vista SP1 Five Language Pack (64-bit): [link]

The 32-bit version of SP1 is available as a 434.5 MB stand-alone file for those who choose to deploy a standalone installation and based on the file size, it will take a estimated 40 minutes to download it on a DSL connection.

The 64-bit version of SP1 is available as a 726.5 MB file and it will take under 1 hour, 10 minutes to download it.


At least three system reboots is required and the installation will take a estimated 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Installing the 32-bit version of Windows SP1 will require at least 7 GB of hard drive space while the 64-bit version requires as much as 13 GB.)

Now that Windows Vista SP1 is out support for the Windows Vista RTM is expected to end on 13 April 2010...two years after the availability of Vista SP1.

If you have any questions or comments regarding Windows Vista Service Pack 1, please let me know.