Microsoft is offering two fresh Windows Vista updates to testers in what was the potential to be a taste of the first service pack for the operating system. 938979 Vista Performance and Reliability Pack and 938194 Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack are being offered via the "Windows Server 2008 Beta" program in Microsoft Connect. The updates are delivered for both the 32-bit and the 64-bit editions of Windows Vista.

From the initial date of general availability on January 30, 2007, Windows Vista was plagued with issues associated more or less directly with the compatibility, performance and reliability of the platform. It appears that the end user input got to Microsoft and that the company has undertaken the necessary measures to resolve the issues.

"This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the performance and responsiveness for some scenarios and improves reliability of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios," reads the description of the 938979 Vista Performance and Reliability Pack published on AeroXP.

With a private beta version of Vista SP1 already under way, the two updates released to testing seem to offer a preview of the service pack. Still, although Vista SP1 could very well include these resolves, the fact of the matter is that Microsoft can also simply make them available through Windows Update. The Redmond company has stressed on numerous occasions the fact that the update infrastructure built around the operating system is increasing in relevance in the detriment of future service packs. Here are two lists with the improvements included in the updates.

938979 Vista Performance and Reliability Pack

￭ Improves performance in resuming back to the desktop from the Photo and Windows Energy screensaver.
￭ Resolves an issue where some secured web pages using advanced security technologies may not get displayed in Internet Explorer on Windows Vista.
￭ Resolves an issue where a shared printer may not get installed if the printer is connected to a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system and User Access Control is disabled on the Vista client.
￭ Resolves an issue where creating AVI files on Vista may get corrupted.
￭ Improves the performance in calculating the 'estimated time remaining' when copying/moving large files.
￭ Improves performance in bringing up Login Screen after resuming from Hibernate.
￭ Resolves an issue where synchronization of offline files to a server can get corrupted.
￭ Resolves a compatibility issue with RAW images created by Canon EOS 1D/1DS Digital SLR Camera which can lead to data loss. This only affects RAW images created by these two specific camera models.
￭ Resolves an issue where a computer can lose its default Gateway address when resuming from sleep mode.
￭ Improves the performance when copying or moving entire directories containing large amounts of data or files.
￭ Improves the performance of Vista's Memory Manager in specific customer scenarios and prevents some issues which may lead to memory corruption.

938194 Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack

￭ Improved reliability and compatibility of Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
￭ Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
￭ Increased compatibility with many video drivers.
￭ Improved visual appearance of games with high intensity graphics.
￭ Improved quality of playback for HD-DVD and Blue-Ray disks on large monitors.
￭ Improved reliability for Internet Explorer when some third party toolbars are installed on Vista.
￭ Improved Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
￭ Improved the reliability of Windows Calendar in Vista.
￭ Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from XP to Vista.
￭ Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
￭ Increased reliability and performance of Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.