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Responding to reports of endlessly rebooting PCs that flooded support newsgroups last week, Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday it had pulled an update designed to prep Windows Vista for Service Pack 1.

Although the update — actually a pair of prerequisite files that modify Vista’s install components — has been temporarily pulled from Windows Update, Microsoft has not yet produced a fix for users whose machines either won’t boot or reboot constantly.

Source: ComputerWorld

A few days ago Adrian Kingsley posted in reply to several TalkBack comments that he wouldn’t carry out these tests until XP SP3 was released. There didn’t seem any point. That didn’t satisfy the crowds who wanted to see Vista SP1 and XP SP2 go head to head. So, to cut a long story short, the pestering continued and I eventually gave in. So what follows are the fruits of nearly two whole days of work at the PC Doc HQ (the test was hampered by the death of a motherboard, something which rendered hours of work obsolete).

How does Windows Vista SP1 compare to Windows XP SP2?

Part 1

Part 2

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ ZDNet

Microsoft has already indicated there is going to be a six week wait for Windows Vista SP1 because of driver issues. Even without that, they seem to have issues with just the prerequisite downloads for SP1.

In most cases, they reported that the final update hung while displaying the message “Configuring Updates Step 3 of 3 - 0% Complete,” which was followed by a reboot of the PC. Which was followed by another reboot, and another. “[It] reboots ad infinitum,” said Frank Melk on the Microsoft support newsgroup. A smaller number reported a different problem: After the update, their computer refused to boot normally.

Source: ComputerWorld

The Vista Developers Blog reveals that Vista Service Pack 1 has gone gold, but won’t be released officially to consumers through Windows Update until Mid-March, at the earliest:

“Service Pack 1 brings new improvements that are based on feedback we heard from our customers. It further improves the reliability and performance of Windows Vista. The information we collect thanks to tools like the Customer Experience Improvement Program, Online Crash Analysis, and Windows Error Reporting help us learn about where and when customers are having issues with Windows Vista and the applications that run on it. Since these issues have a direct impact on our customers’ experiences, we’ve invested time and energy to make this better. While Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is an important milestone, we will continue to invest in the continuous improvement process.

SP1 also includes changes focused on improving the performance of Windows Vista in areas that impact the customer experience the most. For instance, with SP1, copying or moving files around your PC, your home network or your corporate network should now be much faster — up to 50% faster in some scenarios (according to our internal tests). In addition, on many kinds of hardware, resuming a Windows Vista-based PC from sleep is faster on Service Pack 1.”

In April 2006, Microsoft made some changes to how Internet Explorer interacted with ActiveX controls, and ActiveX controls on web pages had a “click to activate” prompt. After hearing from the users that this was extremely annoying, Microsoft decided it was for the better if they licensed and developed technology to eliminate that prompt, and to auto-run all ActiveX controls. Since these changes only affect the browser, web developers with ActiveX controls will have to do virtually nothing for the ActiveX prompts to disappear. The new build of Internet Explorer, without annoying ActiveX prompts, will become available in April 2008, and will be packaged with Vista SP1 and XP SP3. Anyone hoping to try beta forms of this new IE build will get that opportunity in December 2007.