Microsoft Releases Compatibility & Reliability Packs for Vista

Does this mean the OS will work now?

from WinCustomize Forums

While Service Pack 1 looms somewhere in the far-off distance, Microsoft is keeping busy with patches and fixes for Windows Vista.  Today, they officially announced the availability of what many consider to be the first stages of what will eventually be SP1; the "performance and reliability" and "compatibility and reliability" patches.  They currently don't show up as an option in Windows Update and have to be downloaded manually, but that is likely to change come the next Patch Tuesday, August 14th.

Here are a few of the major fixes introduced by these patches:

  • Explorer file transfer (copy/move) speed improved.
  • Improves memory management performance.
  • Offline file synchronization fixed.
  • Numerous game hardware-related incompatibilities corrected.

Each patch may be downloaded separately from the Microsoft support site, but requires that you validate your installation of Vista before receiving the file.  While these are no longer beta patches, you should probably keep an eye to your favorite tech forums to see how others are getting along with the fixes before applying them yourself.

Download: Performance & Reliability (KB938979)
Download: Compatibility & Reliability (KB938194)

14,432 views 21 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Installed! I'm gonna try to copy 30-40 GB later on once my backupi machine is set up.
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
im too..
copy faster..
Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Oi, Zoomba, wots this 'ere in the subtitle, then: "Does this mean the OS will work now?"

I'll 'ave yer know that I've bin running Vista fer 8 month now and 'aven't noticed it NOT working....'cepts when I turns it off.

Oh, and thanks for the heads up on this release....a mate who trials/beta tests for MS says these patches do improve functionality and reliability, so I'll give them a try based on his experience.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
"Does this mean the OS will work now?"

Strange...Zoomba never struck me as being ignorant before?
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I use the subtitle on news posts for snarky comments
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'm copying larger amount of data now from my main comp to my secondary comp, both running vista with these patches. seem to work pretty good so far.
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thanks Zoomba

Did fix my camera program.
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I use the subtitle on news posts for snarky comments


Yep, we can often use the additional amusement/humor.

BTW, I've installed both patches and just for a test I copied the entire contents of my music folder (35gb) using Vista over to XP on my dual boot and it was noticably quicker and did not show such inaccurate time remaining, etc. Took a bit over 1 hour 20 and didn't seem to drag/overly draw on the CPU as before.

Haven't noticed any other improvements as yet (been busy doing other stuff) but I shall report any I happen to notice.
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
installed them, and my system is actually still running....surprising given the amount of hardware issues i've had on a system that meets "vista ready" standards. heck, "games for windows" are giving me problems, namely Company of Heroes, which ran fine on XP. maybe the patch will help with that *cough* kind of had this coming I guess, but one would think vista ready and games for windows stickers would give you some level of comfort
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I've got both patches installed now on my laptop running Vista Ultimate 32-bit edition. I haven't done anything to really test them out, but things do somehow seem a little faster overall. It could just a placebo effect there, though.
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9757059-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Is this guy a microsoft hater, or just REALLY impatient?
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Installed both. Nothing screwed up, but no improvements seen either yet.
Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thanks for posting these! I installed them and wanted to report back with results. I've noticed significantly improved startup times, thats the biggest thing. I haven't done any large file transfers or anything, yet. Hopefully we'll see some more of these from MS.
Reply #15 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Dunno if the patches were the cause or not, but after installing them the dialog in the library, rip and burn pages, etc, wasn't showing in Windows Media Player. There may be another cause, but I un-installed the patches and the dialog returned....shall reinstall the patches later and will report back on the result.
Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Still gettting those "display driver has stopped responding" messeges!!!!
Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top
the perfomance one works but that compatibility one sucks..my media players..winamp..windows media, doesn't recognize files from my external
Reply #19 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Dunno if the patches were the cause or not, but after installing them the dialog in the library, rip and burn pages, etc, wasn't showing in Windows Media Player. There may be another cause, but I un-installed the patches and the dialog returned....shall reinstall the patches later and will report back on the result


I reinstalled the Compatibility & Reliability patch (KB938194) and again lost the text in all Windows Media Player windows. I opened several other apps but it seems only to affect WMP. Furthermore, uninstalling the patch itself did not restore the text, even after I ran Ccleaner....a complete system restore was necessary before WMP was returned to normal.

Another strange thing, even though I installed the Performance patch previously, it would not install this time....after doing the update search it returned a "not compatible with your system" message.
Reply #20 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I installed those two, and it kinda helped. It used to crash each time I opened file explorer due to domain share issues. Now? Well it pauses for good 10 seconds or more, but in least it won't crash.

File copy is a little better. 1 MB file in raid-5 system takes 2 seconds as opposed to full 15 seconds before.
Reply #21 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I am not sure which one of these updates was the culprit, but Vista64 BSOD'd twice on me since then. And that was the first and only two times it ever did that to me. I will most likely have to uninstall one or both of them...