Vista Performance and Reliability Pack

Microsoft released a preview of an upcoming Vista Performance and Reliability Pack to its beta testers while everyone else will have to wait until August, the 14.th to download the pack. That is, unless you have read the Neowin announcement which linked to download locations for the Vista Performance and Reliability Pack for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista.

If I wanted to be precise I would have to mention that one patch has the name Vista Performance and Reliability Pack while the other is named Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack. Both fix numerous problems that users have been experiencing with Windows Vista since it was officially released by Microsoft.

Vista Performance and Reliability Pack:

* Improves performance in resuming back to the desktop from the Photo and Windows Energy screensaver.
* Resolves an issue where some secured web pages using advanced security technologies may not get displayed in Internet Explorer on Windows Vista.
* Resolves an issue where a shared printer may not get installed if the printer is connected to a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system and User Access Control is disabled on the Vista client.
* Resolves an issue where creating AVI files on Vista may get corrupted.
* Improves the performance in calculating the ‘estimated time remaining’ when copying/moving large files.
* Improves performance in bringing up Login Screen after resuming from Hibernate.
* Resolves an issue where synchronization of offline files to a server can get corrupted.
* Resolves a compatibility issue with RAW images created by Canon EOS 1D/1DS Digital SLR Camera which can lead to data loss. This only affects RAW images created by these two specific camera models.
* Resolves an issue where a computer can lose its default Gateway address when resuming from sleep mode.
* Improves the performance when copying or moving entire directories containing large amounts of data or files.
* Improves the performance of Vista’s Memory Manager in specific customer scenarios and prevents some issues which may lead to memory corruption.

Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack:

* Improved reliability and compatibility of Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
* Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
* Increased compatibility with many video drivers.
* Improved visual appearance of games with high intensity graphics.
* Improved quality of playback for HD-DVD and Blue-Ray disks on large monitors.
* Improved reliability for Internet Explorer when some third party toolbars are installed on Vista.
* Improved Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
* Improved the reliability of Windows Calendar in Vista.
* Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from XP to Vista.
* Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
* Increased reliability and performance of Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.

Downloads: 32-bit Vista, 64-bit Vista

download mirror

Please Note: The files are packed with 7-zip, make sure you have a unzipper that supports the 7z format. Another word of advice for Vista 64-bit users who run Rivatuner, atitool and or Peerguardian: You will have to use F8 every single time to disable driver signing requirements to use those two programs. x86 version is unaffected.