Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Coming Soon?

Very possibly "maybe"

Published on January 20, 2011 By DrJBHL In Personal Computing

A Russian Microsoft blog has revealed that the first Service Pack for Windows 7 may be on its way soon. Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) will bundle all of the updates and improvements made to the operating system (OS) since its October 2009 release into a single download.

Late last week, the headline "Released Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2" was found on the Microsoft TechNet blog "Russian Windows Virtualization Discussion". The blog promised more discussion of the Service Pack would follow in the coming days.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Release Date On Track

News of a soon-to-be-released Windows 7 Service Pack 1 received plenty of attention from users around the world. Some insiders went as far as speculating that Microsoft's shipment of SP1 was already released to manufacturers (RTM), meaning it would soon be available to all consumers.

Microsoft, however, denied the claims. "Microsoft has not released SP1 to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) at this time, though we are on track for a Q1 release, as we previously announced," the company said in a blog post on January 14. "The comments made in this blog entry included some inaccuracies." (Source: earthweb.com)

A Microsoft spokesperson would only say "we have nothing to share at this time but will keep you posted," when asked for further comment by CNET News. (Source: zdnet.co.uk)

"Some Inaccuracies" Cause for Further Speculation

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is, without a doubt, a very big deal. Many businesses often wait until an operating system receives its first Service Pack before jumping on board, making its release an important part of an operating system's sales time-line.

Nonetheless, it's unclear at this time what about the leak was accurate and what wasn't. If Windows 7 Service Pack 1 was nowhere near completion, it's likely Microsoft would have dismissed the blog and the rumors without hesitation. Clearly, it did not do that.

Officially, SP1 is scheduled for release sometime this half of 2011, probably before the end of Quarter 1. That was the very vague date Microsoft gave it last July, when testing of SP1 began.

Comments

harpo99999

on Jan 20, 2011

doc, according to the microsoft downloads site the win7 sp1 is still in release candidate state, but that usually means withing the next six months it will be released.

harpo

Dr Guy

on Jan 20, 2011

This is, unfortunately, true - even when the OS is mostly just an SP1 or 2 version of the previous OS (like XP to 2k and 7 to Vista). But then I guess they do not want to get burned with an NT4 (pre SP3), ME or Vista so they wait.

I did not. But then my choices were any version of Vista and Win7 - it was a no brainer - 7!

DrJBHL

on Jan 20, 2011

harpo99999

reply 1

doc, according to the microsoft downloads site the win7 sp1 is still in release candidate state, but that usually means withing the next six months it will be released.

harpo

Note the subtitle, harpo.

I did not. But then my choices were any version of Vista and Win7 - it was a no brainer - 7!

OldMsgt

on Jan 20, 2011

There are very few actually. SP1 is primarily a simple roll-up of all the updates released since Windows 7 was released. That is a big difference from Vista SP1, which had significant changes.

If you have been diligent at practicing safe computing and have kept your computer updated, SP1 offers little to no advantage to you. Any perceived performance improvement is likely due to the placebo affect and not to any actual performance improvements. If you have been negligent at keeping your system updated and secure, then SP1 will improve security and may improve performance.

System builders and those who need to reinstall Windows 7 may benefit most as they can install the service patch instead of all the individual updates.

Since SP1 has yet to have an official release, there is no official list of changes. The closest thing is a list of Changes specific to Windows 7 Release Candidate

Additional support for communication with third-party federation services
Additional support has been added to allow Windows 7 clients to effectively communicate with third-party identity federation services (those supporting the WS-Federation passive profile protocol). This change enhances platform interoperability, and improves the ability to communicate identity and authentication information between organizations.

Improved HDMI audio device performance
A small percentage of users have reported issues in which the connection between computers running Windows 7 and HDMI audio devices can be lost after system reboots. Updates have been incorporated into SP1 to ensure that connections between Windows 7 computers and HDMI audio devices are consistently maintained.

Corrected behavior when printing mixed-orientation XPS documents
Prior to the release of SP1, some customers have reported difficulty when printing mixed-orientation XPS documents (documents containing pages in both portrait and landscape orientation) using the XPS Viewer, resulting in all pages being printed entirely in either portrait or landscape mode. This issue has been addressed in SP1, allowing users to correctly print mixed-orientation documents using the XPS Viewer.

Change to behavior of “Restore previous folders at logon” functionality
SP1 changes the behavior of the “Restore previous folders at logon” function available in the Folder Options Explorer dialog. Prior to SP1, previous folders would be restored in a cascaded position based on the location of the most recently active folder. That behavior changes in SP1 so that all folders are restored to their previous positions.

Enhanced support for additional identities in RRAS and IPsec
Support for additional identification types has been added to the Identification field in the IKEv2 authentication protocol. This allows for a variety of additional forms of identification (such as E-mail ID or Certificate Subject) to be used when performing authentication using the IKEv2 protocol.

Support for Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX)
There has always been a growing need for ever more computing power and as usage models change, processors instruction set architectures evolve to support these growing demands. Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) is a 256 bit instruction set extension for processors. AVX is designed to allow for improved performance for applications that are floating point intensive. Support for AVX is a part of SP1 to allow applications to fully utilize the new instruction set and register extensions.

Conclusion
Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 represents Microsoft’s continuing commitment to quality. While many of the updates contained in SP1 are available as individual downloads, the integration of these updates in SP1 enhances the ease of deployment for IT administrators. This functionality, coupled with advanced new virtualization features such as Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX, demonstrates how SP1 will provide the ongoing improvements that customers and organizations alike have grown to expect from Microsoft.

DrJBHL

on Jan 20, 2011

It would be nice to know that if one has downloaded the security, etc. updates, they won't be duplicated, or will be uninstalled and the updated 'patches' etc. will be, in their stead.

OldMsgt

on Jan 20, 2011

after you install it you can use the following to remove all the backup files it creates to regain space on HD

DISM is a new command line for W7 it does not work in earlier versions of Windows

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/dism-command-line-tool-to-manage-windows-7-features/

Remember you cannot uninstall SP1 after using this tip
How to cleanup old hot fix information after installing SP1 (cleanup tool)
Once Service Pack 1 is installed you may opt to remove old information regarding old hot fixes and the SP1 un-installation tool as well. Note that if you perform this step you can NEVER remove SP1! It may behoove you to keep a full image pre SP1 backup of your system if you ever want to go back

On most systems you should expect between 500MB and 1.5GB of space recovered by running this program. To run you must launch a command prompt with Administrator privileges, then execute the following command:

dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded

Philly0381

on Jan 20, 2011

I've never had a problem downloading and applying a Service Pack that I got by way of Windows Updates so I suspect that this will be no different. That is how it's released, correct?

Uvah

on Jan 20, 2011

Saved it.

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