SP1 Info

[Znod]

I have added quite a few more items to post #9.

[CrowdAds]

[Znod]

New links in post #9.

[airman]

Driver issues like the ones mentioned anyone having these with the SP1 and if so what were they and what was the fix

[airman]

This is of another site and it appears another bug is popping up with Sp1 "The innocuous "Automatic Updates" Windows Update option finally reared its ugly head today as Windows Vista SP1 updates started rolling out the Microsoft Windows Update pipeline to end users. What I for one didn't know was that one of these self same updates has now looped over 56 times on my computer with no sign of stopping — spiraling me down an endless headache of "Configuring updates: Stage 3 of 3 — 0% complete. Do not turn off your computer." "Shutting down" [restarts and loops]. Luckily we have Windows Safe Mode! Fortuitously astute Microsoft programmers decided Safe Mode needs to configure updates prior to booting too. Resolution? None in sight. In an hour of Googling I not only discovered that the same bug seemed to evolve when SP1 was in early beta releases, but that its prevalence for striking has become increasing apparent within the past 48 hours. Official Microsoft forum threads are beginning to grow, and the 3 am bewitching hour when all automatic updates seem to run will undoubtedly add more victims to the SP1 Update Demon that has been spawned. 126 reboots now with no end in sight — should I video tape this as a YouTube viral video, or maybe even set a Guinness World Record? Alas, the insidious Microsoft Windows Vista in its ever self serving nature has finally taken my PC away from me, all at the thought of being a little more bug free with SP1. Fix this Microsoft!"

[Znod]

That's the update I was avoiding before the problem began. Apparently you can download the update, from MS downloads I presume, and install it--which is supposed to take care of the problem. Presumably you could install from safe mode. Hope it works.

[Znod]

Hi Friends:

I know that I have been advising those who don't like adventures in software to stay away from SP1 for a while--while checking to see how the pros, semipros, and masochists fare (I won't reveal my class ). Regardless, I downloaded, from Technet, and installed SP1 RTM.

The installation took about 1 hour and 5 minutes from click to finish. All was very smooth. After installing, the first thing I dealt with was my low screen resolution. I set it to highest level in the control panel, and it looked good even though I could see that my NVIDIA card had not installed. After fixing the resolution, I put all my misplaced icons where I like them. I then went to device manger to see what all had not installed.

The only things that appeared not to be installed properly were my NVIDIA card, as mentioned, and my Realtek HD Audio. I simply reinstalled the drivers for these devices from device manager, and all was well.

I was glad that my Synaptics touchpad had installed properly because, with major changes, I usually have to reinstall its driver. But, oops, I spoke too soon. I noticed that the Synaptics animation was not in my taskbar when I found that I needed to set some of my touchpad settings. So, I went to investigate. Somehow, in fiddling around, I found that a trial version of the software was installed--or at least that is what Vista told me. Go figure. So, I could not set the settings I wanted to set.

It took me a while to sort things enough for now. I presumably uninstalled the trial version of Synaptics, went to HP, and got the right driver for my lappy. I installed the driver, but the touchpad would not work. After hooking up a mouse, device manager told me there was a registry problem. I found that the old trial version of Synaptics had not uninstalled completely. I used YourUninstaller to completely uninstall all pieces of Synaptics anything. Then, I restarted. For now, the Vista generic touchpad driver is getting me through the night. I will investigate more thoroughly tomorrow and finish my sorting process. It really should not be a problem getting the touchpad back into proper form. Maybe this problem is the reason that Windows update keeps pushing the Synaptics touchpad driver at us. We'll see.
I have not had time to experience much of SP1, but, when I have obervations, I will update this thread. I did not do any benchmarks, but I will be able to tell if things are significantly different. You can rely on me not to overstate the merits, including speed, of SP1. I will have to be really impressed to give high praise. But, I'd be really impressed if SP1 didn't break significant things that used to work well.

[Znod]

My WEI went from:

5.1, 4.8, 3.1, 4.1, 5.1 to
5.1, 4.8, 3.3, 4.4, 5.1

No big deal, but the changes are positive for SP1. And, the improvements were in graphics performance--which is a good place to have them.

[airman]

Well I am glad to see the install went without to much of a problem and I hope the is lots of feedback once it goes out to the mass public and when I install it on my 3 systems i do not have any problems either and thanks for the brave install and glad to see it went pretty smooth.

[Znod]

Thanks much Airman. I'll be getting back with my more or less immediate impressions soon.

[Znod]

Very interesting new item added to post# 9.

[Znod]

SP1 may have killed Photoshop CS3 Extended. After installing SP1, I checked to see how CS3 was working. It seemed more responsive, less subject to hanging, etc. However, after using it a short while, I received a message indicating that "licensing is no longer active." The instructions were to repair install, uninstall and reinstall, talk to IT, or contact Adobe help. I could not find a phone number such as the one you get when activation fails. So, I chose to pursue both the 2nd and 3rd options. The repair install installed fine, but I still had the same problem after finishing. Then, the uninstall worked fine. But, the install didn't work. CS3 went through the whole install process and finally said that some shared items could not be installed--so nothing installed except a little junk. So, I am putting forth the hypothesis that there are bad feelings between SP1 and CS3 and that SP1 killed CS3 We shall see.

A better question for this topic might have been: Did Photoshop kill SP1 and Znod? The perfect storm hit. I decided to continue to try to get CS3 back on my SP1. I tried all sorts of things, for example, maintnance, to get CS3 to reinstall. Finally, I system restored back to right before I installed SP1. I tried CS3. Same problem. So, I decided to dump SP1, in favor of CS3, by Acronising back to before I installed SP1 and some other things. Acronis started its process properly. But, at some point, my screen said that something had failed to copy--possibly because of a bad disk sector. Being dumb, apparently, I decided to stop Acronis and start over. No dice. I could not restart my machine, and, for some reason, I was unable to start from my Acronis disk. So, my system melted down. I told one person jokingly earlier that I had hoped that SP1 would mess my installation up so I'd have an excuse to put 64-bit on my machine. Well, I got my wish.

I have installed Vista Ultimate 64-Bit on my HP. All is great, and the early returns imply that CS3 is working better than on 32-bit Vista. It iwas time to get free of HP anyway. I hate retore partitions and restore disks. I had already gathered most the 64-bit drivers for my system from the HP site.

The question remains. Did SP1 have anything to do with my CS3 problem? Just coincidence. I really don't know, but I have never had that kind of problem with any version of Photoshop. Man, if SP1 was responsible, then there are going to be a lot of very unhappy people out there in Vistaland even though some report no SP1-CS3 problems.

[Znod]

Very interesting new item on post #9.

[Znod]

Updated for Paul Thurrott.

[ProCookie]

gotta say SP1 is a speed deamon, dont miss out on this one folks it rocks.

[Znod]

Hi Ant:

Good to see. Have you been smoking parsley again?