The geek world might be all over Windows 7, and the rest of the world might be sticking to Windows XP for now, but there is also this Windows Vista operating system lingering around. Microsoft has just released the final version of the second service pack for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.
While Windows Vista SP2 comes with a whole load of improvements and fixes, Microsoft listed the most important ones for us in a handy overview page at TechNet. A lot of work has gone into improving support for WiFi and BlueTooth 2.1, and they also added the ID and vendor strings for VIA’s new processors. It also comes with Blu-Ray recording technology and Windows Search 4.0, which comes with improved performance and more relevant search results.
For Windows Server 2008 customers, there’s also a list of improvements. Hyper-V will now be a part of Windows Server 2008, instead of it being a separate download, turning it into a “fully integrated feature”, ” including one free instance with Windows Server 2008 Standard, four free instances with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and an unlimited number of free instances with Windows Server 2008 Datacenter.” Other changes include improvements in WebDAV, power management, and more.
The service pack comes in a single package which will work on both Windows Vista and Server 2008. There’s a 32bit version and a 64bit version. Note that SP1 is a pre-requisite before installing SP2 (SP1 came integrated on Server 2008). In addition, people who used vLite to alter their base Windows installation may not be able to install Service Pack 2 because required components may have been removed. There’s a “workaround”: happy re-installing.
The geek world might be all over Windows 7
Not the whole geek world as I consider myself a part of it. I downloaded and installed Win7 and overall it seemed quite good. It was reasonably snappy, it installed without a hitch keeping my WinXP installation intact and so on. So, at first I was rather positively impressed.
Then came the downhill; even after setting the resolution to 1280×1024 the whole thing seemed to waste huge amounts of screen real-estate. And neither of my soundcards are supported, and probably never will be either. SB Live! and SoundMax AD1888 don’t have digitally signed drivers available and there is no way to force Win7 to accept non-signed ones, and I am not going to buy new soundcards just because an OS refuses to accept what I have.
So yeah, Win7 fails for me. But if all of your hardware does have such digitally signed drivers available then Win7 could be a good way to go.
Yeah .. SB Live! drivers are kinda hard to come by .. I ditched using a separate sound card close to 5 years ago and started using the onboard. Imho, onboard sound is just as good as the separate cards, but I’m not an audiophile either.
The soundmax one though is a different story .. it’s onboard right? so you should be able to at least find vista drivers that will install on windows 7 … I tried that when I first installed the beta and used the disk that came with my mobo with vista drivers and 7 used those just fine.
SoundMax is a world of hurt on Windows Vista. You generally can get basic stereo output, but that’s it. They have no proper Vista drivers, so Microsoft made one.
I’d at least think the mobo maker would post drivers on the site though. Since the audio is integrated on the mobo, the responsibility is the mobo maker’s to provide the necessary drivers.
I’m actually fine with stereo output (better than nothing) but again I’d take what works.
Edited 2009-05-26 13:11 UTC
I’d at least think the mobo maker would post drivers on the site though. Since the audio is integrated on the mobo, the responsibility is the mobo maker’s to provide the necessary drivers.
None of the mobo makers use SoundMax AD1888 anymore so all the drivers are already outdated and don’t have the required signature. Believe me, I spent several hours googling and trying every single driver I could find. Still none of them worked. There’s plenty of those for Vista, but as said, they’re outdated. It’d be nice if I could somehow make Win7 accept non-signed drivers, but alas, there is no such thing.
That’s one thing that I’ve always disliked about Windows; it tells you what you can and cannot do, not vice versa. I still might use Win7 if I just could get audio working, atleast to have some touch with it if I ever need to repair a Win7 installation.
I do not understand this fetish in some oses with requiring signed drivers. I don’t mind if they warn me, but whether to install the driver or not should be my decision, no one else’s. My computer, my hardware… my choice to make that hardware work or not. What’s next, only allowing signed applications as well like some smartphone oses have already done? Look at some of the latest Symbian versions, trying to get around their signed application requirement can be a royal pain.
One word,
Monopoly.
What does it have to do with monopoly? any organisation can go out use one of the many third parties that provide such services; code signing simply tells you that the driver is written by the company who they say they are – that the Intel driver you are about to install is actually written by Intel and signed by Intel to say so.
I don’t know why you claim ‘monopoly’ when you have the necessary stuff provided by a a third party – thus it isn’t Microsoft leveraging their monopoly; heck, right now pretty much all software companies are signing their software.
Personally my experience of this is that a few unvetted drivers together can make a system unreliable when they don’t quite mesh. This can be almost indistinguishable from hardware gremlins. The result is a frustrating loss of productivity for the user and a bad impact on the reputation of the operating system.
Secondly, if they are beta testing the operating system then they have good reason not to be interested in getting sidetracked by bugs in grotty drivers. Maybe the RC or full releases will carry a different viewpoint.
Thirdly, in the Microsoft PC world computers are sold, too often, on price alone when one has fully tested and supported drivers and another doesn’t. Stability and reliability don’t happen by accident – testing and debugging cost time and money. As time goes on computers are becoming appliances that should need less and less tweaking,
I understand that, but at the same time, it is my choice to proceed with said installation. This is a situation where the os is acting against me, and that is unacceptable. I’m now in a position to need to tweak the system to accept whichever driver it will not accept… and what was that about needing less tweaking, again?
How long until we’re only allowed to run signed applications too?
If I had posted a comment in response to a new version of a Linux distro being released and called it a failure for not supporting all my hardware, I’d get at least 900 replies that it is the hardware vendor’s fault for not providing up to date drivers. In this case, I agree with them, especially when it comes to Creative… they seem notoriously bad about not releasing drivers for newer Windows versions in hopes that you’ll go out and buy one of their latest cards.
There is kind of a logical reason for this.
Under Windows you are talking a closed source development model, so really you can only blame the hardware vendor or Microsoft for not having the drivers available. Most people blame Microsoft, because they are the giant and should have more control.
With Linux, it really is the Hardware Vendor that the fault lies upon, because if they don’t make the driver themselves, they have the possibility of just releasing specs (whether under NDA or not) to someone in the Linux community and then the driver will be created.
When there is no available specs, then the driver has to be reverse engineered, which in many cases is pointless, because by the time the driver is in a usable state, the hardware itself is mostly obsolete.
I mostly agree though that the Hardware Vendors should be the ones to blame 75% of the time on Windows. The other 25% of the time it’s because Microsoft has changed their driver model (like what happened when Win2k was released, as well as Vista).
If I had posted a comment in response to a new version of a Linux distro being released and called it a failure for not supporting all my hardware, I’d get at least 900 replies that it is the hardware vendor’s fault for not providing up to date drivers.
I did mention that besides lacking the drivers it seems to actually work quite peachy and I was rather impressed. I didn’t call Win7 a failure except for my personal case. And I didn’t blame Microsoft for lacking the drivers either. It IS Creative’s fault for not updating their drivers, and I don’t even know the real manufacturer for those SoundMax chips, but they sure as heck are even worse.
Anyway, I still didn’t take time to reboot out of WinXP, but I got yesterday a few priv messages from kurgan2001, and the last one seems interesting: http://www.blogsdna.com/2775/install-unsigned-drivers-on-windows-7-… . So, if you have similar issues as me then you could try that and hopefully it’d work then.
Only 64-bit forces signed drivers right? And have you tried the trick mentioned here: http://www.minasi.com/newsletters/nws0903.htm ?
Pretty nice work actually! Blu-Ray recording baked in without having to install third party crap == Win.
No WGA check to download, again, good move!
This one I noticed though: “SP2 removes the limit of 10 half open outbound TCP connections. By default, SP2 has no limit on the number of half open outbound TCP connections.†Welcome to the present.
P.S. Gosh, Microsoft, ditch the damn iframes in your site.
At last!
Unfortunately this is part and parcel with their sales model where they try to split the market into niches but the problem is that many of these niches over lap and end users requirements change all the time.
Going off course I always thought that it would bet better of they had two types, Desktop and Server – then sell support as a separate package for the server line (and allow ‘power users’ to expand their desktop support if they want).
…are released.
That means that the rest of the world need to wait additional time to get SP2. What a shame.
Why not make it avaialable in all languages at the same time so that we wouldn´t get this frustration.
Because we’re the beta-testers
I completely agree with you. All languages should be released at the same time. Waiting months for smaller language bases to be released means all those machines are vulnerable to anything that was fixed in SP2 that doesn’t have it’s own separate KB patch.
I haven’t done much in other languages, but for those who have… is there really THAT much work that needs to go into a service pack release for another language. I figured 90% of what happens is updates of files with newer versions which means that language was already there/that language didn’t need anything specific as it’s just code
So you’re suggesting that if all computers can’t be protected, NO COMPUTER should get protection.
Yes, localization really IS that much work. You’re writing documentation, dialog boxes, error messages, legalese (especially legalese) for all of those languages. You have to make sure the switches and keyboard accelerators don’t conflict with expected behavior in the other languages. And of course, MS probably has fewer people doing that for the smaller languages than they do for the big ones so it takes longer still.
That said, they probably will have the other languages out by the end of June.
I’ve installed it on my parents computer and it seems to be going very well so far – no incompatibilities; Chrome 2, Office 2007 along with all the hardware is working well. I also noticed a we bit of a speed boost; not too sure whether that is just wishful thinking or reality but none the less all is going well.
A tip for those who are happy with the outcome of installing SP2: running %windir%\system32\compcln.exe cleans up left-over cruft and frees up space. However, it does mean that uninstalling SP2 becomes impossible.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Vista-SP2-Compcln-exe-and-Other-Nota…