Although I'm late to the party in reviewing Windows Vista SP1, it's becoming widely available as I write this, so now is as good a time as any for my review. Rather than try to cover every improvement in SP1, I'm going to cover my particular experiences. Read my review.
I have had some pretty ugly problems with my Windows Vista install over the last several months. At its worst, Vista would lock up several times almost every day I used it. When Vista would lock, I'd see the spinning circle cursor and would be unable to select any applications. ALT+F4 did nothing, nor did CTRL+ALT+DEL.
The lockups primarily happened when I used two specific applications, so I tried to avoid running those apps. I tried new video card drivers, new chipset drivers, uninstalling and reinstalling applications. One problem was reproducible every time. If I opened both apps at the same time just after logon, the machine would lock up. Both of these applications are stable and popular and they weren't the problem, so I'll refrain from naming them. This is my Vista Reliability Monitor for the last month:
This weekend, I ran across an Ed Bott article about speeding up Windows Vista startup times. Ed says:
I hate antivirus software. I hate all-in-one security solutions even more. As it turned out, the slowdown on two systems here was directly attributable to overvigilant security software.
I agree with Ed and avoided using Norton Security Suite and others like it for the reasons he described. I run Computer Associates eTrust Antivirus, which had worked well for several years on my Windows XP machines. Based on Ed's article, I decided to try disabling the eTrust on-access scanner to see if it might have something to do with my lockups. The second I tried to disable the scanner, my machine locked up.
I had nothing to lose by temporarily uninstalling the antivirus software, so I did so and tried to reproduce the problem. I tried opening the problematic applications and no matter what I did, I couldn't get the machine to lock up. Ed recommends NOD32, so installed it, and not only did it solve the lockups that I'd been living with for several months, but my machine is noticeably faster. I don't mean to malign CA's eTrust, but given how long these problems went on, I can't recommend the product. The applications I use aren't unusual, and performance was pretty poor with eTrust installed.
This just shows that no matter how long you've been working in IT and how much you think you know, there's always someone out there with a perspective you didn't consider or answer you couldn't find on your own.
Windows Vista SP1 review 
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