Vista SP2 is out

Night Hawk · 01 Jun 2009

Well when I say "side by side" that not only applies to two separate installations seen on two separate drives but the exact same programs running on both RCs as well as Vista here.

With a clean install of Vista just having been done here to see both SPs go on fresh as well I still found the RCs loaded up stepping out in front again for not pulling cpu down as they load up as well as the faster boot to finish loading time. In fact they took on XP now gone as well seeing faster start up and shutdown times while XP didn't have much more then the basics on there.

petrossa · 01 Jun 2009

Well, actually me too. I've dedicated even two equal disks (WDC 500) to each os, installed all applications with the same parameters separately on both os's (except that don't work under 7)

In normal everyday usage there's no difference at all. Even when i run Windowblinds to skin Vista (which doesnt work yet with 7) i can perceive no difference in responsiveness.

The only real tangible difference there is, is being able to set Audio Endpoints without shutting the app, a smaller footprint of 7 by about 100 mb and a slightly lighter idle processor load.

The other cosmetic changes are not really progress but just diversions on a theme.

Once apps are running i can perceive using my tools at hand (Process Lasso) no important differences worth paying for.

Night Hawk · 01 Jun 2009

Did you know you can bring back the Classic Windows look in 7? You simply go into the Control Panel>system or right click on the Computer icon on the desktop and then click on the advance system settings>Performance button and set that for performance or custom to disable all of the animations.

fusion1 · 03 Jun 2009

Anyone know why since I upgraded Vista to SP2, now during bootup it always does a disk check Disk c: ok Disk d: ok Disk e: ok etc. Seems like this ads an additional minute to start-up time.

I went to msconfig>boot expecting something may have changed there like some kind of diagnostic setting but nothing. It almost seems like safe mode when you see all the text on a black screen before it gets to the disk check. I'd rather get rid of this annoying POST screen. Suggestions?

Zaphire · 03 Jun 2009

fusion1 said:

Anyone know why since I upgraded Vista to SP2, now during bootup it always does a disk check Disk c: ok Disk d: ok Disk e: ok etc. Seems like this ads an additional minute to start-up time.

I went to msconfig>boot expecting something may have changed there like some kind of diagnostic setting but nothing. It almost seems like safe mode when you see all the text on a black screen before it gets to the disk check. I'd rather get rid of this annoying POST screen. Suggestions?

Sounds like you've got what they call 'the dirty bit' set each time you boot up and a chkdsk is occuring. Somehow it's got stuck and is not clearing. If you Google for the term 'dirty bit' and stuck or set you should find a way to clear it and boot up normally.
Of course if your disks are really corrupted chkdsk may have be having trouble fixing them. In which case the dirty bit stays set.

fusion1 · 03 Jun 2009

Thanks I will check it out. Hopefully it fixes it. Weird thing is the beta version of SP2 worked like a charm.

fusion1 · 03 Jun 2009

Seems like the fix for cleaning the dirty bit didn't work for me. This also before it runs the CHKDSK is it says loading windows software and you see things listed in the system32 folder. Then a banner showing Windows Vista SP2 build 6900 or something appears then the CHKDSK and everything always comes out clean then it boots into Windows. Annoying...

Night Hawk · 04 Jun 2009

fusion1 said:

Anyone know why since I upgraded Vista to SP2, now during bootup it always does a disk check Disk c: ok Disk d: ok Disk e: ok etc. Seems like this ads an additional minute to start-up time.

Zaphire said:

Sounds like you've got what they call 'the dirty bit' set each time you boot up and a chkdsk is occuring. Somehow it's got stuck and is not clearing. If you Google for the term 'dirty bit' and stuck or set you should find a way to clear it and boot up normally.
Of course if your disks are really corrupted chkdsk may have be having trouble fixing them. In which case the dirty bit stays set.

On a clean primary seeing a totally fresh install of the Vista test build seeing all updates handed out to SP2 beta testers the boot process automatically checks all disks by default while quite a bit faster paced then you would see with a scheduled check disk.

MS made it part of the boot process to alert the user if problems like bad sectors come up rather then waiting until something catastropic happens like a drive failure or something now buggy like an invalid boot sector or partition table problem.

Personally while not seeing this on the 32bit Vista it was interesting to that visible on the 64bit Vista Ultimate SP2 build downloaded from Technet for a good look over.

mukul · 04 Jun 2009

I installed SP2 on Vista Home Premium. Didn't notice any major change like improvement in boot-up time etc which people have been reporting

But I hope atleast it'll stop crashing now. SP1 used to crash every week.

Night Hawk · 04 Jun 2009

It didn't make any difference here at all for startup or shutdown times. The Tecnnet newsletter sheds a little light on seeing support added to Vista for newer hardwares. I suspect that may include support for the new USB 3.0 standard that will be coming for home users in 2010 as well.