FlashD
02-22-2011, 08:27 AM
Today is the grand day. Microsoft just released the Service Pack for Windows 7. Besides the usual pack of all previously released patches (more than 800) it also includes:
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 Intel's 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.
Improved Support for Advanced Format (512e) Storage Devices
SP1 introduces a number of key enhancements to improve support of recently introduced storage devices with a 4KB physical sector size (commonly referred to as "Advanced Format"). These enhancements include functionality fixes, improved performance, and updated storage drivers which provide applications the ability to retrieve information as to the physical sector size of storage device. More information on these enhancements is detailed in Microsoft KB 982018 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982018).
Gamers will be happy to know that the Service Pack gives you a few frames in DirectX based games as well.
For anyone interested into the documentation it can be found here (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=61924cea-83fe-46e9-96d8-027ae59ddc11&displayLang=en).
The service pack can be downloaded through the Download center on Microsoft's website (1953.3MB to download and about 4100MB of free space for 32-bit systems and 7400MB for 64-bit systems to install) or you can wait for the smaller install from Windows Update (about 44MB to download and 750 MB of free space to install for 32-bit systems and 74MB to download and 1050MB of free space to install for 64-bit systems, if you've been keeping your system updated) which is also the recommended way.
More information here (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/learn-how-to-install-windows-7-service-pack-1-sp1).
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 Intel's 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.
Improved Support for Advanced Format (512e) Storage Devices
SP1 introduces a number of key enhancements to improve support of recently introduced storage devices with a 4KB physical sector size (commonly referred to as "Advanced Format"). These enhancements include functionality fixes, improved performance, and updated storage drivers which provide applications the ability to retrieve information as to the physical sector size of storage device. More information on these enhancements is detailed in Microsoft KB 982018 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982018).
Gamers will be happy to know that the Service Pack gives you a few frames in DirectX based games as well.
For anyone interested into the documentation it can be found here (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=61924cea-83fe-46e9-96d8-027ae59ddc11&displayLang=en).
The service pack can be downloaded through the Download center on Microsoft's website (1953.3MB to download and about 4100MB of free space for 32-bit systems and 7400MB for 64-bit systems to install) or you can wait for the smaller install from Windows Update (about 44MB to download and 750 MB of free space to install for 32-bit systems and 74MB to download and 1050MB of free space to install for 64-bit systems, if you've been keeping your system updated) which is also the recommended way.
More information here (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/learn-how-to-install-windows-7-service-pack-1-sp1).