14 DAY TRIAL // Much to the disappointment of Windows Vista users, now counting in excess of 100 million, the release to manufacturing build of Vista Service Pack 1 was not synonymous with general availability. Vista SP1 RTM'd on February 4, 2008, and only on February 18, did Microsoft make the service pack available for download to the participants in the SP1 beta testing program. In addition, Vista SP1 will be delivered in advance to the company's Volume Licensing customers, and to MSDN and TechNet Plus subscribers. End users, however, will have to wait until mid-March in order to get their hands on Vista SP1 via Microsoft Update, Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center, and until mid-April for the service pack to begin being served through Automatic Updates.
But while you are waiting for Vista SP1, you can deploy the latest version of a performance, responsiveness and reliability update for Windows Vista. Microsoft initially delivered the Vista performance, responsiveness, and reliability update in December and then in early January. The last tweak to the update was applied at the end of the past month, after the release of Windows Vista SP1 Release Candidate (RC) Refresh 2, which is essentially the same as Vista SP1 RTM. In this context, it is clear that the tweaked Vista update 943899 was not integrated in the gold bits of Vista SP1.
"This update improves performance, responsiveness, and reliability of Windows Vista in various scenarios. This update resolves the following issues on a Windows Vista-based computer: you receive a 'Stop 0x000000A0' error when you try to switch the computer to the hibernate state; you receive a 'Stop 0x0000009f' error when you switch the computer to the hibernate state or to the standby state. Or, you receive this Stop error when you resume the computer from the hibernate state or from the standby state. This problem occurs on a computer that has a wireless network connection. The disk does not spin down after a specified time of inactivity. Additionally, this update can help improve performance when you perform operations that are related to large disk I/O. After you apply this update, you may notice up to a 15 percent performance improvement in some copying operations and when moving some large files," Microsoft informed.
Update for Windows Vista (KB943899) 32-bit can be downloaded from here. Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB943899) is available via this link.