Under the Hood of Vista SP1

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 brings to the table a wide range of improvements addressing all areas of the operating system, from performance to additional support for new technologies and standards, as well as the synchronization with Windows Server 2008. But at the same time, there are a number of enhancements set in place that address developers in particular. Specific evolutions of various aspects of the latest Windows client, which although will ultimately come to benefit end users, impact directly hardware and software developers. However, Microsoft has failed to highlight the changes in Vista SP1 which affect developers in the official documentation accompanying the service pack. While the information is provided, you will essentially have to read between the lines, and filter through all the alterations introduced with Vista SP1.

Released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, both Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 feature aligned codebases, and in this context, the first service pack for Vista comes with a new core. "Beyond the kernel and subsystem improvements, Windows Vista SP1 brings major improvements to IIS 7. Comparing the original Windows Vista 'RTM' version against that shipped with SP1 is like comparing the basic and premium models of a car - the SP1 version of IIS contains all the features added to create the server-strength edition (with the caveat that Windows Vista SP1 is obviously not licensed for use as a commercial-scale production Internet web server)," revealed Tim Sneath, Microsoft resident group manager for client platforms.

The addition of IIS7 components to the client operating system is a collateral result of the alignment of Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008. The vast majority of end-users will not even be aware of IIS7 components in Vista SP1, but the move specifically targets web-based developers. The presence of IIS7 in Vista SP1 is designed to allow the testing and building of web-based applications, but flexibility for developers stops at that.

"You'll see other changes to Windows Vista that affect certain relatively niche groups of developers. Direct3D receives a minor update to 10.1; there are new APIs to control the Data Execution Protection and Kernel Patch Protection features; and there are new cryptographic and random number generation algorithms available for developer use. As ever, more information about these features can be found in the Windows SDK," Sneath added.

Vista SP1 takes DirectX 10 from Vista RTM up to version 10.1. The update to Direct3D 10 introduces support for new hardware features. At the same time, enhancements have been made to the Data Execution Protection (DEP) memory-protection feature in both Vista SP1 and XP SP3. With this move, Microsoft is allowing developers to fine tune the controls of DEP settings.

"As a .NET developer, you'll notice that Vista SP1 updates the installed .NET components to .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1. The good news is that many of the enhancements from .NET Framework 3.5 are included in 3.0 SP1 - for example, of the list of fifteen enhancements to WPF described in this blog post, everything apart from System.AddIn and the Firefox XBAP support is included in Windows Vista SP1. This is a little bit confusing, but it probably helps to know that each of the last .NET Framework releases have built on top of each other, rather than existing side-by-side," Sneath said.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Five Language Standalone for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the operating system is available for download HERE.


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