Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including
home and business desktops, laptops,
tablet PCs, and media center PCs. Prior to its announcement on July 22, 2005, Windows Vista was known by its codename "Longhorn."
Development was completed on November 8, 2006; over the following three months it was released in stages to computer hardware and
software manufacturers, business customers, and retail channels. On January 30, 2007, it was released worldwide,
and was made available for purchase and download from Microsoft's
website. The release of Windows Vista came more than five years after the introduction of its predecessor,
Windows XP, the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft Windows desktop operating systems. It was succeeded by Windows 7 which was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and for the general public on October 22, 2009.
Windows Vista contains many changes and new features, including an updated graphical user interface and visual style dubbed Aero, a redesigned search function, multimedia tools including Windows DVD Maker, and redesigned networking, audio, print, and display sub-systems. Vista aims to increase the level of communication between machines on a home network, using peer-to-peer technology to simplify
sharing files and media between computers and devices. Windows Vista includes version 3.0 of the .NET Framework, allowing software developers to write
applications without traditional Windows APIs.
Microsoft's primary stated objective with Windows Vista was to improve the state of security in the Windows operating system.
One common criticism of Windows XP and its predecessors was their commonly exploited security vulnerabilities and overall susceptibility to malware, viruses and buffer overflows. In
light of this, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced in early 2002 a company-wide "
Trustworthy Computing initiative" which aimed to incorporate security into every aspect of software development at the company. Microsoft stated that it prioritized improving the security of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 above finishing Windows Vista, thus delaying its completion.
While these new features and security improvements have garnered
positive reviews, Vista has also been the target of much criticism and negative press. Criticism of Windows Vista has targeted its high system requirements, its more restrictive licensing terms, the inclusion of a number of new digital rights management technologies aimed at restricting the copying of protected digital media, lack of compatibility with some pre-Vista hardware and software, and the number of authorization prompts for User Account Control. As a
result of these and other issues, Windows Vista had seen initial adoption and satisfaction rates lower than Windows XP.
However, with an estimated 330 million
Internet users as of January 2009, it had been announced that Vista usage had surpassed Microsoft’s pre-launch two-year-out expectations of achieving 200 million users. At the release of Windows 7 (October 2009), Windows Vista (with approximately 400 million Internet users) was the second most widely used operating system
on the Internet with an approximately 18.6% market share, the most widely used being Windows XP with an approximately 63.3% market share.
As of May 2010, Windows Vista's market share estimates range from 15.26% to 26.04%.
Service Packs:
Service Pack 1
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) was released on February 4, 2008, alongside Windows Server 2008 to OEM partners, it was a five-month beta test period. The initial deployment of the service pack caused a number of
machines to continually reboot, rendering the machines unusable.
This caused Microsoft to temporarily suspend
automatic deployment of the service pack until the problem was resolved. The synchronized release date of the two operating systems reflected the merging of the workstation and server
kernels back into a single
code base for the first time since Windows 2000. MSDN subscribers were able to download SP1 on February 15, 2008. SP1 became available to current Windows Vista users on Windows Update and the Download Center on March 18, 2008.
Initially, the service pack only supported 5 languages - English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese. Support for the remaining 31 languages was released on April 14, 2008.
A whitepaper published by Microsoft near the end of August 2007 outlined the scope and intent of the service pack, identifying three major areas of improvement: reliability and performance, administration experience, and support for newer hardware and standards.
One area of particular note is performance. Areas of improvement include file copy operations, hibernation, logging off on domain-joined machines, JavaScript parsing in Internet Explorer, network file share browsing, Windows Explorer ZIP file handling, and Windows Disk Defragmenter. The ability to choose individual drives to defragment is being reintroduced as well.
Service Pack 1 introduced support for some new hardware and software standards, notably the exFAT file system, 802.11n wireless networking, IPv6 over VPN connections, the Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol. Booting a system using Extensible Firmware Interface on x64 systems was also introduced; this feature had originally been slated for the initial release of Vista but was delayed due to a lack of compatible hardware at the time.
Two areas have seen changes in SP1 that have come as the result of concerns from software vendors. One of these is desktop search; users will be able to change the default desktop search program to one provided by a third party instead of the Microsoft desktop search program that comes with Windows Vista, and desktop search programs will be able to seamlessly tie in their services into the operating system. These changes come in part due to complaints from Google, whose Google Desktop Search application was hindered by the presence of Vista's built-in desktop search. In June 2007, Google claimed that the changes being introduced for SP1 "are a step in the right direction, but they should be improved further to give consumers greater access to alternate desktop search providers". The other area of note is a set of new security APIs being introduced for the benefit of antivirus software that currently relies on the unsupported practice of patching the kernel (see Kernel Patch Protection).
An update to DirectX 10, named DirectX 10.1, marked mandatory several features which were previously optional in Direct3D 10 hardware. Graphics cards will be required to support DirectX 10.1. SP1 includes a kernel (6001) that matches the version shipped with Windows Server 2008.
The Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) was replaced by the Group Policy Object Editor. An updated downloadable version of the Group Policy Management Console was released soon after the service pack.
SP1 enables support for hotpatching, a reboot-reduction servicing technology designed to maximize uptime. It works by allowing Windows components to be updated (or "patched") while they are still in use by a running process. Hotpatch-enabled update packages are installed via the same methods as traditional update packages, and will not trigger a system reboot.
Service Pack 2
Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista was released to manufacturing on April 28, 2009, and released to Microsoft Download Center and Windows Update on May 26, 2009. In addition to a number of security and other fixes, a number of new features have been added. However, it did not include Internet Explorer 8: Windows Vista Service Pack 2 is build 6002.18005.090410-1830.
- Windows Search 4.0 (currently available for SP1 systems as a standalone update)
- Feature Pack for Wireless adds support for Bluetooth 2.1
- Windows Feature Pack for Storage enables the data recording onto Blu-ray media
- Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify Wi-Fi configuration
- Improved support for resuming with active Wi-Fi connections
- Enables the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronisation across time zones
- Support for ICCD/CCID smart cards
- Support for VIA 64-bit CPUs
- Improves audio and video performance for streaming high-definition content
- Improves Windows Media Center (WMC) in content protection for TV
- Provides an improved power management policy that is up to 10% more efficient than the original in some[clarification needed] configurations[citation needed]
Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 share a single service pack binary, reflecting the fact that their code bases were joined with the release of Server 2008. Service Pack 2 is not a cumulative update meaning that Service Pack 1 must be installed first.
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