This is how SP1 went. Good. Let's have your feedback.

[taylormah]

I have a laptop with nvidia gpu having laptopvideo2go 169.25 driver installed,, Do I need to uninstall it before I attempt SP1 upgrade??

 

[sidney1st]

No, but maybe you will have to reinstall it after if you use the Nvidia control panel.
If you installed it the quick way (just INF) no need to uninstall/reinstall.

 

[Chappy]

All went well with my SP1 install.

I haven't really noticed any performance upgrade and I didn't have any stability problems beforehand, so it sees the same still.
I did have to log into all my usual sites once more as all my cookies seemed to have been...forgotten..? The cookies were physically still there, it's just that they weren't recognized it seems.
I also had to reset all my desktop icons and sidebar programs but other than these few minor burps, all is well after the first month with SP1.

 

[wbhyde]

My experience with SP1 was quite bad. I installed the SP and then the system would not boot into Windows ({Entry Not Found} NTClearAllSavepointsTransaction could not be located). I tried a number of recovery strategies as mentioned in the posts on this in the Microsoft Technet Forum on SP1 (TechNet Forums » Windows Vista IT Pro » Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1)), but nothing worked. I had to re-install and rebuild my boot drive from scratch.

I'm not likely to try it again until I have a week where I'm willing to lose a few days of work. I noticed it came up in Windows Update and I immediately hid it.

There are some positive outcomes though. I've increased the wealth of external hard drive manufacturers as I now do a boot drive image backup every night. I've also purchased one of the Apricorn drive cloning kits and a duplicate boot drive (though I discovered that Apricorn EZ-Gig won't install under Vista 64 bit due to unsigned drivers; Apricorn says they are working on fixing that and I can boot directly from the CD they sent to clone my hard drive -- haven't tried it yet).

My advice to anyone who tries an SP1 upgrade with a lot of complicated and developmental software installed is to make sure you have a disk clone ready to swap in or at least a Windows Vista Image Backup to restore from. I noticed during the process that as part of the F8 boot menu you can restore directly from one of these backups. I didn't try the restore process, but I did go far enough to note that it found my backup on the external USB drive I had plugged in.

Good Luck!
Bill

 

[JonMCC33]

Install on both Windows Vista Business 32-bit and Windows Vista Business x64 went flawless on every system I've done so far, whether it has been a system that was online for a while and already had previous patches/updates or whether it was a brand new install with SP1 applied first.

Improvements? Dramatic increase when transferring data off of optical media. Huge boost in transfer rates over a gigabit network.

Two thumbs way up.

 

[chrispee]

I have Vista Home Basic on a HP Compaq laptop and had more problems than Iraq. I came to the conclusion that I would have to replace it with XP, but decided to try SP1 as a last resort. It took four attempts to install and was worth the effort because I now have no problems whatsoever. My main problem originally was that I was being told that my OS was illegal and I would not have access to updates and only limited use of the computer. After 2 reboots it would tell me all was O.K. and I could use Windows Update normally. 10 minutes later it would tell me again that I had been the victim of software fraud and the computer would be closed down !
All that is now gone and everything runs beautifully. So just keep trying !

 

[03hdfatboy]

Glad things worked out for ya. I finally got to the bottom of the issues I was having with the previous installs of Vista, and now I absolutely Love it.

 

[johngalt]

My original 2 Vista installs on my P4 3.2(E) GHz machine went terrible - but that was because of bad drivers that I was not warned about in advance. Since then, I have done the SP1 upgrade manually 4 times and through Windows Update 17 times, all but 2 being on Vista Ultimate 32bit, the other 2 being on this Vista Ultimate x64 bit, and I have had almost no issues.

Also, 12 of the VU32bit installs are on iMacs running Parallels with VU32bit being the guest OS.

 

[dmex]

My original 2 Vista installs on my P4 3.2(E) GHz machine went terrible - but that was because of bad drivers that I was not warned about in advance. Since then, I have done the SP1 upgrade manually 4 times and through Windows Update 17 times, all but 2 being on Vista Ultimate 32bit, the other 2 being on this Vista Ultimate x64 bit, and I have had almost no issues.

Also, 12 of the VU32bit installs are on iMacs running Parallels with VU32bit being the guest OS.

Was the experience better or worse than XP?

 

[johngalt]

Better in almost all aspects - it improved the system performance, but one thing I have noticed on *all* Vista installs:

If you use No GUI boot and OS boot information from MSCONFIG (to get the Safe Mode like boot) then I notice that the listing of drivers being loaded slows down *tremendously* - on my P4 it would load pretty fast pre-SP1, but after installing SP1 it was nightmare - the entire screen would shift up one line at a time, taking 1-3 seconds per line, and then the last line that the bottom would appear after all had shifted up, and the process would repeat until the last driver showed (crcdisk.sys). After that it would boot normally.

On faster machines (iMacs, my current beast, etc) the lines scream by pretty quickly pre-SP1 - however, after installing SP1, while not nearly as slow as the P4, t *still* is noticeably slower - to the point where you can see 'refresh scan lines' type effect with the scrolling of the driver list.

Caveat: The *experience itself was about the same, as I was one of hte earliest adopters of XP SP2, back when everyone was scared witless to try it after I had beta tested it twice.

 

[metroman]

Hi,
Installed SP1 okay no problems. Have not noticed anything different, only thing is that my DVD Drive will now not read DVd`s. Microsoft are trying to find a solution to this for me.
Martin

 

[nathan.909]

mine is running fast and smoother with SP1

 

[metroman]

Hi,
I have managed to get my DVD Drive to read disc`s again. What I did was, uninstall the graphics card and then re-install it, and the drive is okay now. Microsoft did not tell me to do this,they were actually not much help really, anyway now up and running okay.

Martin

 

[skunksmash]

SP1 is constantly smooth ...:D

im sure the creation of SP1 was not based around an increase in performance or additional features as such
it just ironed out all the major issues vista had at its birth

& now she is a silky smooth runner...

i hope SP2 does contain some good developments & MS are not just gonna throw all their eggs into the ''windows 7'' basket..

 

[unisoft]

Hi

I thought I would also add a cross post here in case the other post further down was missed!

Having a nightmare after installing SP1 for 64 bit Vista on my HP laptop.

Left the SP1 installing overnight and I returned to a blank screen with a cursor that can be moved about - even onto an extended screen.

I've been into safe mode several times and the first couple of times it coame up with a message informing me that stage 3 was completing from 33% and it took hours to reach 100%. A reboot comes up with the same result as above.

The third (or fourth or fifth! who knows now!!) safe mode login informed me that the installation of the service pack failed and that it would uninstall. Again, a couple of hours and a reboot comes up with the same result. Back into safe mode and it gives me the same message and takes 2 hours or so to show the desktop.

I am now leaving it running overnight in the vain hope there is something goign on in the back ground as I get a flicker of the hdd light every so often.

I've read earlier posts relating to similar issues but can't get around to giving the problem serious time until Tuesday. Does anyone have a good solution to this really annoying problem? I would appreciate any help at all.

thanks

John

 

[chrispee]

I said a couple of weeks ago that I had installed SP1 and it had solved all my problems. At that time I didn't mention the terrible performance I had trying to download and install SP1. Now, one of my original problems was that sometimes the system told me that the copy of Vista was counterfeit and I would receive no updates etc., and then after a couple of reboots it would say the opposite and offer me updates ! On a couple of occasions it shut down the computer completely.What it did just depended on how it felt or the wind direction or whatever !
I discovered a utility on Microsoft web site called MGADiag which examines the computer's system and gives a report on authenticity etc. At this point I should say that I am not a computer expert - far from it, but I am willing to have a go. I downloaded MAGDiag , ran it and was told my OS was an illegal copy.(It was installed by HP and is very legal ). After rebooting a couple of times MAGDiag told me the OS is O.K. So, I started thinking. I had tried 4 times to install SP1 unsuccessfully, so I decided to try a fifth time, and this time I left MAGDiag on the desktop showing a positive report. Please don't laugh. Then I went in and downloaded SP1 with no drama whatsoever, and I have had no problems since and I am beginning to like Vista ! So there ! Give it a go !

 

[wbhyde]

Interesting. I'm sort of seeing a theme in the folks who have problems installing Vista SP1. There seem to be a lot of HP machines that are having problems with SP1. Anybody else notice this?
Bill

 

[johngalt]

Yup - and I have noticed that in general, most of the SP1 installs with all machines that give errors are because of driver issues. Specifically uninstalling and re-installing drivers works in well over 70% of the issues that I have seen go from being problematic to being successful.

 

[wbhyde]

Yup - and I have noticed that in general, most of the SP1 installs with all machines that give errors are because of driver issues. Specifically uninstalling and re-installing drivers works in well over 70% of the issues that I have seen go from being problematic to being successful.

Did you notice any particular drivers that give problems? Is there perhaps a list of them somewhere?

Thanks,
Bill

 

[johngalt]

Not really - it is varied, although I noticed that video drivers and chipset drivers were the most prevalent problems....

I cannot say one way or another if they were more AMD machines or Intel machines, but I can say that most of the problematic drivers were nVidia - but that is because the ATI drivers were known problematic to begin with....most replies to ATI driver issues were "they aren't stable yet" or something of that nature - and of course nVidia fanboyisms: "ATI sucks, get nVidia!!!"