About two months ago, I upgraded my client to the new version of AVG.  I’ve used this product for several years, mostly because it’s free.  I had some annoying issues with the free version because of an incompatibility with Vista’s new security method where session 0 is no longer available.  The console session in XP was Session 0, but in Vista it is the context only services run under.  The purpose is to isolate the user’s GUI from services that may be malicious.  The user now logs into session 1.  Services that need to pop-up messages to the user would just send the command to draw a pop-up message to the same session that it runs under (service account.)  In Vista with SP1 (yes, the initial release of Vista is sp1), they have “allowed’ services to send messages to console session 0 still, but it causes a pop-up stating there is an application that is trying to display a message.  You have to click on the window, and Vista switches the view to Console 0 session so that you can interact with the service.  AVG pop-ups for virus definition installation summary in 7.5 attempted to display summary and caused these interruptions, which was annoying weekly ritual.  Note that in the next service pack Microsoft has stated they will no longer provide this functionality; we will have to wait and see.  Remote control switches have changed for console sessions as well.

I had hoped V8.x would fix this, and it did. But it also seemed bloated to me.  I noticed that in my searches there were circles spinning as soon as I got results.  I quickly tracked it down to the new AVG link scanner.  It is supposed to check if a link is safe before you click on it.  That was annoying as hell to me because it was taking system resources, and was touching all these sites without my authority.    I went into the AVG control panel and disabled the feature.  I wondered how much additional traffic this was causing, and if it was going to throw off Google’s search / link tracking.  It turns out at least the former is true.  Wired noticed a significant increase in traffic to their site; read more about this here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/13/avg_scanner_skews_web_traffic_numbers/

You may not run into this error, but when Vista SP1 is released publicly, you may run into the same problem I did.  When I attempted to run the SP1 x86 for Vista, I got the following message:

“Windows Vista Service Pack 1 cannot be installed on your computer because the language of Windows Vista you have installed is not supported or you have installed a language pack that is not supported.
Windows Vista Service pack 1 can only be installed on computers running the English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish versions of Windows Vista or computers running only those language packs.”

Knowledge Base article 947876decribes what to do: open your control panel, click on Clock, Language, and Region. Then the KB article tells you the wrong area to look.  Instead look for “Install or Uninstall display Languages: , click next, then Select “remove languages” and see if anything besides your main language pack is installed.  Remove it, reboot and the SP1 for Vista should install.

Alternatively, you can download the multi-language version of the SP when it becomes available.

I apparently had installed a language pack when I opened an email from a vendor who is from Sweden.  

Yes, you read that right.  On two occasions I’ve experienced a problem with Gmail with critical emails I had sent.  On two separate occasions I attempted to reply to an email and had a serious problem.  I typed my reply, and clicked Send.  I walked away with the satisfaction that gmail said :

Well, it did send a message, but only the quoted text from the original email.  My text was gone!  What is worse is there was no indication of a problem!  It wasn’t until I received a reply from my recipient  that there was “no message in your post.” 

User error you say? I thought so too, so I re-typed the message, verified the text was there, a moved my mouse and clicked send.  It did it again, and finally a third time.  I ended up using my hotmail account to send the email, and the message was finally delivered.

I wrote it off as a quirk until today it happened to me again.  I tried replying to a message, and the same thing happened.  It can’t be spam blocker (the message was delivered, but no text other than the original message.)  I then went to my Outlook that is setup as IMAP, and the message sent correctly.    I found that there are others who have experienced this problem as well, but everyone is writing off as a spam blocker, but that makes no sense because the message was sent, delivered, received, and read.  It just had none of my content.

So beware – and you heard it here first.  All I can suggest is check your sent folder and verify the message content is there. It’s been an intermittent problem for me, so you never know when it will happen.  I’ll report any progress or response from Google.

I’m impressed with the list of improvements sp1 brings to Vista. My system is much more stable overall, and more responsive overall.  Some things worth knowing about SP1 are:

• Windows Vista SP1 includes a new compression algorithm for the RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) that helps reduce network bandwidth required to send bitmaps or images via RDP. The compression, which can be selected by administrators via Group Policy settings, is transparent to all RDP traffic, and typically reduces the size of the RDP stream by as much as 25-60%, based on preliminary test results.
• Adds support for Direct3D® 10.1, an update to Direct3D 10 that extends the API to support new hardware features, enabling 3D application and game developers to make more complete and efficient use of the upcoming generations of graphics hardware.
• Adds support for exFAT, a new file system supporting larger overall capacity and larger files, which will be used in Flash memory storage and consumer devices.
• Improves performance over Windows Vista’s current performance across the following scenarios:
• 25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine 
• 45% faster when copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system
• 50% faster when copying files from a remote SP1 system to a local SP1 system 
• The Windows Vista SP1 install process clears the user-specific data that is used by Windows to optimize performance, which may make the system feel less responsive immediately after install.  As the customer uses their SP1 PC, the system will be retrained over the course of a few hours or days and will return to the previous level of responsiveness. 
• Windows Vista SP1 includes a new Security Policy (UAC: Allow UAccess), which allows applications to prompt for elevation without using the secure desktop.  This allows a remote helper to enter administrative credentials during a Remote Assistance session
• Allows users to rename or delete folders while working offline with redirected folders. This functionality is important to users that use Folder Redirection and work in offline mode for extended periods of time. This functionality is disabled by default but can be enabled by enabling a registry setting. 
• Adds a WMI interface as a replacement for the MoveUser.exe tool which was removed from Windows Vista.  This allows customers to remap an existing workgroup or domain user account profile to a new domain user account profile.
• Enables support for hotpatching, a reboot-reduction servicing technology designed to maximize uptime. It works by allowing Windows components to be updated (or “patched”) while they are still in use by a running process. Hotpatch-enabled update packages are installed via the same methods as traditional update packages, and will not trigger a system reboot.
• Improves OS deployment by enabling 64-bit versions of Windows Vista to be installed from a 32-bit OS.  This will allow IT professionals to maintain just a single WinPE image.
• GPMC (Group Policy Management Console) will be uninstalled with Service Pack 1 and GPEdit will default to Local Group Policy editing. Following these changes, SP1 users can download an updated version of GPMC which will include new Group Policy capabilities including adding comments to GPOs or individual settings and searching for specific Group Policy settings.
• SP1 reduces the number of UAC (User Account Control) prompts from 4 to 1 when creating or renaming a folder at a protected location

Again, see all the changes here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/4/a/f4a35b2b-2f62-4104-a3e6-5f7bc1318e9f/Notable%20changes%20in%20Windows%20Vista%20SP1.xps

It’s not available for download yet, but here is the schedule for current users:

• In mid-March, we will release Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese) and to the download center on Microsoft.com.  Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1.  If Windows Update determines that the system has one of the drivers we know to be problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1.  Since we know that some customers may want to update to SP1 anyhow, the download center will allow anyone who wants to install SP1 to do so.
• In mid-April, we will begin delivering Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers who have chosen to have updates downloaded automatically.  That said, any system that Windows Update determines has a driver known to not update successfully will not get SP1 automatically.  As updates for these drivers become available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update, which will unblock these systems from getting Service Pack 1.  The result is that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but only when we are confident they will have a good experience.
• The remaining languages will RTM in April.

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/02/04/announcing-the-rtm-of-windows-vista-sp1.aspx

Update: here is a list of changes from Microsoft:http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d69c4e1b-c81a-41be-b1f5-66e615ba5912&DisplayLang=en