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What’s new in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 SP2?

Dec. 2, 2008 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

There’s been some confusion about what is included in Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. For example, I saw somewhere that Hyper-V is supposedly added to Windows Vista in this release. It is not.

Here’s what’s new:

Windows Vista

  • Inclusion of Windows Search 4.0 for improved indexing performance, broader indexing scenario inclusion, as well as new Group Policy integration for Windows Search
  • Integration of the Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless which contains Bluetooth v2.1 support, the most recent specification for Bluetooth wireless technology
  • Some graphics enhancement to reduce glitches when streaming high def content with specific hardware configurations
  • Setup & Deployment improvements to detect incompatible drivers blocking service pack installations
  • Provides a Service Pack Cleanup tool which helps restore the hard disk space by permanently deleting previous versions of files updated by SP2

Windows Server 2008

  • Inclusion of Microsoft’s Hyper-V technology for Server
  • Backwards compatibility with Terminal Services licensing keys
  • Better manageability features with DFS/FRS console, and Storage Resource Manager (i.e.: Quota Filter and File Screening Filter)
  • Improved error reporting in DFSR to help identify incorrectly configured deployments which lead to failed replication
  • Updated power policy driving significant Power Management improvements

Just to be clear, the final version of Hyper-V is added to Windows Server 2008 as part of SP2; the original shipping version of Server 08 (“SP1”) included a pre-release version of Hyper-V.

In short, don’t believe everything you read.

Discuss this Article 6

robertsjoe
on Dec 2, 2008
Confusion about editions of Microsoft products?! No way! @mikegalos thinks it's the best way to do things. Clearly Microsoft and Mike are wrong, wrong, wrong.
tayme
on Dec 2, 2008
Another fine example of our local zit faced teenager in the basement on Daddy's iMac...what a tool you are, robertsjoe. just once, I'd like to see you back up a single claim that you make with factual data. Such a waste. --tayme
Waethorn
on Dec 2, 2008
What would be involved in hacking Hyper-V so that it installs in Windows Vista?
Lindy
on Dec 3, 2008
So now its safe to install a Windows Server os at SP2? Why do they do this, it just confuses people. Waethorn you can run Hyper V on Vista, its called VMware workstation 6.51 and it kicks ARSE all over Hyper V, 8 days a week.
Waethorn
on Dec 3, 2008
"Waethorn you can run Hyper V on Vista, its called VMware workstation 6.51 and it kicks *** all over Hyper V, 8 days a week." Apples (not those Apples) to oranges. VMware Workstation is a for-pay version of Virtual PC. It's not a hypervisor solution, nor is it free.
Waethorn
on Dec 3, 2008
....my question still stands. I'm guessing Microsoft will never do this officially anyway, since they recommend that the parent OS be dedicated to running the Hypervisor and nothing else. I'm not sure exactly what the reasoning is for this. I'm guessing it has something to do with having minimal overhead and offering the highest level of performance for load balancing between child partitions. It also means the parent OS has access to all this nice hardware that the child partitions don't, and it's not even being used to its full extent. I just don't see the full-performance load balancing thing being a big issue for virtualization on a desktop. I mean, Virtual PC can only do enough as it is. Virtual PC already supports VT hardware too though. I kind of wonder, that if Microsoft implemented Hyper-V in a parent desktop OS (and supported sound, etc.), what would the performance difference be between it and Virtual PC running with VT hardware support.... Is there much difference? What are the barriers in implementing "full" hardware virtualization too? ie. full video card virtualization, DirectSound support, etc. Isn't this breaking into the realm of what I was talking about in the other article about layers of complexity? I mean, if you only had a hypervisor which virtualized all hardware, and then stripped direct hardware requirements out of legacy operating systems, you'd be left with something that looks like an OS shell which runs as an isolated environment for legacy apps. Hmm....

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