windows-vista-sp1 posts

Many gamers have opted out of upgrading to Microsoft's latest Windows operating system, Vista, due to a myriad of complaints. In spite of supporting DirectX 10 exclusively, gamers were dismayed by the strange drop in performance when switching over to Vista. Gaming performance dropped down about 10 percent when run on Vista environments, as opposed to XP. Now that SP1 is becoming readily available for download, benchmarking is finally possible.

The folks at Extreme Tech tried out Vista SP1 and XP SP3. There are improvements for both platforms, but Vista easily gains the most in this first patch. Whereas before, games on Vista produced lower framerates, they now perform identically to XP games. With driver issues finally being resolved on the maturing Vista product, gamers may finally make the leap to Vista ... provided they aren't waiting for the next Windows OS.

A few weeks ago Microsoft announced that their final service pack update for their Windows XP operating system was ready to be made available to download. Then Microsoft announced they had not only delayed the release of Windows XP service pack 3, they had also halted automatic updates for Windows Vista SP1. Now News.com reports that both XP SP 3 and Vista SP 1 are now available to download yet again.

According to the report, Microsoft cheated a bit in making the updates to their two operating systems available again to their customers. Instead of actually fixing the issue that caused them to be pulled in the first place (incompatibilities with the Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System program) they simply released the updates with a filter that prevents the updates from being installed on any PCs that have the Dynamics RMS program. This shouldn't affect most PC gamers who presumably don't have that program installed on their system. Microsoft said a true fix for both OS updates is in the works but didn't reveal a release date.

Remember how we reported that Microsoft had gotten their final Windows XP service pack completed and ready to be released? Well, there's been a little snag. Microsoft has decided to suspend the release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 indefinitely. Why? According to an official statement, the company discovered a last minute glitch that prevents SP3 from working on Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System.

Not only that but this glitch was also discovered on the first service pack for Windows Vista as well. That means Microsoft has decided to suspend the automatic updates for Vista SP 1 as well. Microsoft just begun to allow Vista users to download SP 1 via their automatic download feature earlier in April. So far there's no word on when either service pack for XP or Vista will be made available for customers.