Leaked Patches of Windows Vista Improves Performance and Reliability

Two collections of Windows Vista Operating System hot fixes leaked to the Internet after being offered to Windows Server 2008 beta testers couple of days ago.

The patch collections are labeled as "Vista Performance and Reliability Pack" and "Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack" features a long list of of bug fixes. Two important fixes which caught my attention are reduced resumption time after sleep or hibernation and improved speed of copying or moving large directories.

These patch collections are expected to be released officially on August 14th through Windows Update channels. The leaked patches can be downloaded from the links Vista 32 Bit Version Pack and Vista 64 Bit Version Pack (I've not downloaded and tested the patches. Download and install them only if you trust the source).

Updates are:

• Windows6.0-KB938194-x64.msu @ 3.65mb
• Windows6.0-KB938194-x86.msu @ 2.13 mb
• Windows6.0-KB938979-x64.msu @ 14.15mb
• Windows6.0-KB938979-x86.msu @ 9.86mb

Vista Performance and Reliability Pack

• Improves performance in resuming back to the desktop from the Photo and Windows Energy screen saver.
• 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.