PCTips Box

Microsoft is gearing up for the next stage in the delivery of its first service pack for Windows Vista. The Redmond company has confirmed officially that the automatic distribution of Vista SP1 is just around the corner. Still, at this point in time, the deadline for the debut of Vista SP1’s serving through Automatic Updates has not been made public. Microsoft has stated all along that it plans to start the distribution of Vista SP1 through AU by mid-April, but offered no additional information to pinpoint the release.

Service Pack 1 was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, concomitantly with the gold version of Windows Server 2008. Only on March 18 did Microsoft manage to make the service pack available to end users via Windows Update and the Download Center. At that time, the Redmond company only released the English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese language versions of Vista SP1. (more…)

Windows Vista RTM has had quite a rough ride throughout 2007, with Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Stave Ballmer acknowledging software and hardware incompatibility problems. And while Service Pack 1 is essentially designed to soften all the rough edges of the latest Windows client, Vista SP1 is not without problems of its own. In this regard, Microsoft informed of a glitch in the Configuration Data store on Vista SP1 and Vista RTM which when the user attempts to resume a copy of the operating system from hibernation is instead informed that the platform was shutdown.

“When you wake a computer that is running Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) from hibernation, you may receive the following error message: ‘System was shutdown unexpectedly’,” Microsoft explained. “This issue occurs when the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store contains incorrect information for the Resume from Hibernate entry.” (more…)

Keeping a close eye on Microsoft is not exactly an easy task, moreover since the company has entered a new era of translucency over transparency. But at the same time there are a variety of sources orbiting Microsoft and providing enough crumbs from the Redmond feast. The problem in this context is the centralization of information. In this regard, the Microsoft EvNet Dev Team has made available a collection of no less than five gadgets designed to integrate seamlessly with the Windows Vista Sidebar and deliver content from the main videocontent websites focused on the Redmond company.

“Check out this set of Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets for keeping up to date with the latest content on Channel 8, Channel 9, Channel 10, TechNet Edge, and Mix Online. Features: automatic rotation of latest articles on the site allows you to quickly see what’s new and keep up to date without opening a browser, read articles and view videos right on your desktop or navigate directly to the post and the gadgets work with both Silverlight 1.0 as well as the SL 2 beta,” revealed Ronan Geraghty, a member of the Developer and Platform Group in Microsoft Ireland. (more…)

Microsoft has updated and re-released Windows NT Backup on March 27, 2008, making it available as a free download. The move comes as the utility needs to keep up the pace with the evolution of the latest Windows client and server operating systems. Microsoft released both Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 RTM/SP1 to manufacturing on February 4, 2008. Windows Server 2008 was launched officially at the end of the past month, while Vista SP1 was released to the general public on March 18.

Version 1.0 of Windows NT Backup dropped on March 27 is tailored to both Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008. The utility is designed to enable users of Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 to restore backups that were created on the previous versions of the operating systems, namely Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. In the move from XP and Windows Server 2003, Microsoft has evolved the backup infrastructure of the two platforms. (more…)

The long awaited, highly anticipated Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) will finally be available by Microsoft. For many, SP1 is the promise land for fixing those annoying performance, compatibility and slow file copy problems that have plague Vista since it’s release.

Only time will tell.

Regardless of what happens, pre-cautions should be taken to ensure a successful upgrade to Vista SP1.

Below are five steps you should follow BEFORE installing SP1, that should help with achieving a successful upgrade and ensure no data is lost. (more…)

Everything else has not failed… Well, maybe the Wow… So, when on the remnants of the failed Wow, Microsoft is now bringing in the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 cavalry. With Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Technical Fellow in the Platform and Services division at the lead, the Redmond company offered the Springboard Live! Interactive Virtual Roundtable the past week. Keyword being live, at this point in time, you can consider that you missed it. But not entirely. You can no longer participate in the roundtable, and as such the interactivity label is nothing but a label, but you can access the entire event via this link.

“Join Mark Russinovich and a panel of experts for a live, interactive discussion on adopting Windows Vista into a desktop infrastructure. (more…)

As it promised, Microsoft Corp. yesterday started sending Windows Vista users an update that identifies illegal copies of the operating system installed with cracks that the company will disable when it distributes Service Pack 1 (SP1) in two weeks. Last Thursday, Microsoft announced the update, which detects two common cracks used to activate pirated copies of Vista, and said it would hit Windows Update (WU) within a week. Users who have left Vista’s recommended WU settings alone will receive the update automatically. Others, said Microsoft, must enable Automatic Update within Vista or manually call up WU from the Start menu.

A document posted to the company’s support site spelled out the details. Among other things, it promised that the 3MB update “does not affect the functionality of your operating system.” (more…)

Microsoft officially confirmed the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 downloads at the end of the past week. On February 21, 2008, the gold bits of Windows Vista SP1 were offered for download via Windows Update. The move was a derail from the timetable set for the delivery of the RTM Build of Vista SP1, initially planned for general availability starting with mid-March 2008, according to Mike Nash, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Windows Product Management. Nash announced on February 4 that the final bits of Vista SP1 would find their way to end users through Microsoft Update, Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center in mid-March, and then through Automatic Updates beginning with mid-April.

But the fact that the end users of Vista got the short straw without even participating in the draw does not mean that the Redmond company did not release Vista SP1 RTM. (more…)

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is designed to evolve the RTM version of the latest Windows client from Microsoft, made available in November 2006 to business customers, and in January 2007 to the general consumers. Essentially, Vista SP1 is not a repeat of Windows XP Sp2, and outside of minor changes to the fabric of the operating system such as an overhauled Desktop Search mechanism, support for the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) and kernel tweaks designed to bypass the PatchGuard (Kernel Patch Protection) security mitigation, the original architecture of Vista RTM remains unchanged.

In this context, the built-in super administrator account in Vista has survived to the first service pack. “In Windows Vista, the built-in administrator account is disabled by default. In previous versions of Windows, an Administrator account was automatically created during Out-of-Box-Experience (OOBE) with a blank password. An Administrator account with a blank password is a security risk. To better protect the system, the built-in Administrator account is disabled by default in all clean installations and upgrades of Windows Vista,” Microsoft informed. (more…)

The Automated System Recovery (ASR) is one of the aspects in Windows Vista that has been evolved with the introduction of Vista Service Pack 1. A Windows application programming interface, ASR is designed to keep track of and record the configuration of disks and volumes on a system. In the end, ASR comes into play in cases of bare metal recovery scenarios. Ahead of restoring the operating system as well as the associated content including programs and data, ASR will take the disks and volumes to their original state. The Automated System Recovery will manage disks in accordance with Critical and non-Critical labels, depending on whether they do or do not contain system state or operating system components.

“ASR in Vista and Server 2008 is tightly integrated with the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and presents a writer interface, which is a significant change from Server 2003 and XP. During a backup the ASR writer reports metadata describing all the disks and volumes on the system. (more…)