Windows Vista SP1 is now available
The long-awaited service pack for Microsoft's latest consumer operating system is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The 32-bit download weighs in at 434.5 MB while the 64-bit download is a bit larger at 726.5 MB -- both versions include English (US), French, German, Japanese, and Spanish (Traditional) languages.
SP1 ushers in a number of updates for the Windows Vista operating system including the following:
- Adds support for new UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) industry standard PC firmware for 64-bit systems with functional parity with legacy BIOS firmware, which allows Windows Vista SP1 to install to GPT format disks, boot and resume from hibernate using UEFI firmware.
- Adds support for Direct3D® 10.1, an update to Direct3D 10 that extends the API to support new hardware features, enabling 3D application and game developers to make more complete and efficient use of the upcoming generations of graphics hardware.
- Adds support for exFAT, a new file system supporting larger overall capacity and larger files, which will be used in Flash memory storage and consumer devices.
- SP1 addresses issues many of the most common causes of crashes and hangs in Windows Vista, as reported by Windows Error Reporting. These include issues relating to Windows Calendar, Windows Media Player, and a number of drivers included with Windows Vista.
- Improves the performance of browsing network file shares by consuming less bandwidth.
- Improves power consumption when the display is not changing by allowing the processor to remain in its sleep state which consumes less energy.
- Improves responsiveness when doing many kinds of file or media manipulations. For example, with Windows Vista today, copying files after deleting a different set of files can make the copy operation take longer than needed. In SP1, the file copy time is the same as if no files were initially deleted.
- Improves the copy progress estimation when copying files within Windows Explorer to about two seconds.
- Service Pack 1 includes supported APIs by which third-party security and malicious software detection applications can work alongside Kernel Patch Protection on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista. These APIs have been designed to help security and non-security
- ISVs develop software that extends the functionality of the Windows kernel on 64-bit systems, in a documented and supported manner, and without disabling or weakening the protection offered by Kernel Patch Protection.
A full list of updates/fixes related to SP1 can be found on Microsoft's Windows Vista TechCenter.
Direct Links
X86 SITE LINK : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b0c7136d-5ebb-413b-89c9-cb3d06d12674&DisplayLang=en
X86 DOWNLOAD LINK: http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/a/9/3a9b72c2-527d-4694-8a49-84c056d4c34d/Windows6.0-KB936330-X86-wave0.exe
X64 SITE LINK : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=874a414b-32b2-41cc-bd8b-d71eda5ec07c&displaylang=en
X64 DOWNLOAD LINK: http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/3/b/83b8c814-b000-44a4-b667-8c1f58727b8b/Windows6.0-KB936330-X64-wave0.exe
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