Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.

-Plato 

(I’ll let you decide which half applies.)

They say all good things must come to an end, and that is the case today:  I want to share with you the bittersweet news that I am moving on to a role outside Microsoft.  It's a bit deflating to know that this constitutes my last post to the Windows Vista Team blog.  But by the same token, I'm thrilled, amazed and humbled at the success that this blog has become.  Our aim has always been to share the Windows story in an open and approachable manner.  Given the role we play today as a community resource, I'd wager that we're doing pretty well in that regard.

While this good thing ends for me today, in actuality, it continues for you:  I leave you in the extremely knowledgeable and capable hands of my colleague Christopher Flores, a Director on the Windows Communications team.  Christopher has been with Microsoft for many years and will draw on a wealth of experience in his efforts to bring you the Windows story.  He arguably is even better positioned for this role than I, so I'm confident that, with Brandon's help, he'll continue bringing you the information and first-person accessibility you've come to expect from our blog.

It's been a fun ride these two years and I thank you, our many readers, for your enthusiasm and support.  May our paths cross again, and until then, be well.

-- Nick

To search for files on my PCs, I use Windows Search - Windows Vista's desktop search feature. I use Windows Search specifically to find photos that I've tagged in Windows Live Photo Gallery or important emails and Word documents. I also rely on saving specific searches that I can go back to later on. Searching and being able to find important files quickly on my PC is very important to me.  And Windows Search allows me to "find my stuff" whenever I need to. Today we get to see a little "preview" of the next step for Windows Search. The Windows Search Team is making available Windows Search 4.0 Preview - a preview of the next version of desktop search for Windows.

Windows Search 4.0 introduces several improvements I'd like to call out making search even better in Windows Vista:

• With Windows Search 4.0, the Windows Search Team has fixed most of the reported bugs causing a majority of distractions users have seen since Windows Vista RTM - many of those bugs were reported by you.
• Great improvements have been made with regards to performance.Even now as Preview, Windows Search 4.0 has query response time about 33%faster than search queries in Windows Vista RTM.
• The Windows Search Team has extended Remote Index Discovery for PC-to-PC search to work onevery supported version of Windows. This makes finding information on other PCs running Windows Search 4.0 quick and less resource-consuming. Now Windows Search can find information shared on a remote PC by accessing an index on that PC - and you will open files only when relevant to your search. This will also work if the user's profile is redirected.
• The Windows Search Team has implemented Rollback Recovery where your search index will roll back to the last known good state (this is good in handling disc write errors). If an error occurs, your index isn't rebuilt from scratch; only the newly changed files are added to the index, making recovery from system errors not as disruptive to the machine or the user

 Being able to find files isn't just important to consumers - it is also important to IT Professionals managing enterprise environments. The Windows Search Team has made some improvements in Windows Search 4.0 that IT Professionals should take note of:

• We have improved performance when indexing Exchange in online mode, sending fewer packets and making less RPC calls. In this process we apply significantly less load on the Exchange server too.
• Support for Group Policy settings is extended and improved; per-user policy is supported now.
• We now support EFS - Windows Search 4.0 will index encrypted files, and user can search for them in the sane UI and through the same user experience as seen with regular, unencrypted files.

IT Professionals can expect a smooth deployment for Windows Search 4.0 and easier support.

With Windows Search 4.0, the Windows Search Team has taken the next step in improving the PC search experience in Windows. To download and check out the Windows Search 4.0 Preview yourself, click here. I encourage folks to try out the Windows Search 4.0 Preview and let us know what you think!

Many of you have asked us when the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) would be available for download now that Windows Vista SP1 has been released. As of today, you can!

RSAT is an excellent set of tools for IT Pros wanting to manage their Windows Server environment right from their desktop. RSAT also includes an updated Group Policy Management Console (GPMC), which was previously removed in Windows Vista SP1.

Download: Remote Server Administration Tools (x86)
Download: Remote Server Administration Tools (x64)

RSAT is an updated version of what is called ADMINPAK.MSI and can be used by IT Pros to manage computers running Windows Server 2008. Because many of these tools also work for managing computers running Windows Server 2003, it is essentially "the next version" of ADMINPAK.MSI.

The following are a list of the tools you will find in RSAT:

Role Administration Tools:

• Active Directory Certificate Services Tools
• Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Tools
• Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) Tools
• DHCP Server Tools
• DNS Server Tools
• File Services Tools
• Network Policy and Access Services Tools
• Terminal Services Tools
• Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) Services Tools

Feature Administration Tools:

• BitLocker Drive Encryption Tools
• Failover Clustering Tools
• Group Policy Management Tools
• Network Load Balancing Tools
• SMTP Server Tools
• Storage Manager for SANs Tools
• Windows System Resource Manager Tools

And these tools also fully supported managing Windows Server 2003 servers:

• Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Tools
• Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) Tools
• Active Directory Certification Authority Tools
• DHCP Server Tools
• DNS Server Tools
• Terminal Services Tools
• Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) Services Tools
• Group Policy Management Tools
• Network Load Balancing Tools

Download RSAT today and start managing your servers!

We've reached a pivotal moment in time, the release to Web of Windows Vista SP1 on Tuesday and, to complete the picture, today we released Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2008, the latest generation of the Microsoft Solution Accelerators designed to simplify and ease your deployment experience.

There are a lot of things to consider when deploying a new OS and, if your organization has 50 desktops or more, MDT is designed to help you navigate the potentially complex desktop environment. Our goal is to save you lots of time and effort in planning and building out a standard desktop experience all the way to rolling OS images out into production.

Don't worry, this is not something unproven and new -- just fewer than 1 million of you across industries have been active users of MDT's predecessor, Business Desktop Deployment (BDD). Past customers include companies like Unilever, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications and Fred Weber, who reduced their deployment costs from $300 to $35 per PC.

We have been listening to your feedback and augmenting the solution to ensure that the best of real world best practices are infused within the tool.

So what's changed with MDT?                              

In addition to the project, process and team guidance that has traditionally existed, the major thing that we worked on for this release is incremental guidance to progressively enable your deployment process.   Examples include:

• New checklist and wizard-driven user interface
• Quick start guides that familiarize you quickly with the tools and deployment process

There are also more ways to automate deployment, including Zero Touch installation; new task sequencing for more flexible and simplified configuration; and new Lite Touch installation support for multicasting with Windows Deployment Services to help ease network load.

In fact, if you are planning to deploy Windows Server 2008 with Windows Vista concurrently, there are major advantages to using MDT. Check out Continental Airlines, who rolled out both Windows Server and Windows Vista.  The ability to build images and deploy desktops and servers (including Windows Server 2008), was actually a key driver for our name change from BDD.

You can download MDT 2008 today. For more information, go to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=113979 or contact a Desktop Deployment Planning Services specialist. Also see the TechNet Springboard for the Five ways that Windows Vista deployment just got easier.

Oh and, still using BDD 2007? Don't worry, we didn't forget about you either. An update for BDD 2007 to support SP1 imaging and deployment is also available from here.

Today, you can now download Windows Vista SP1 via Windows Update.  For those of you eager to receive the benefits of Windows Vista SP1, you can now do so.  We've seen quite a bit of questions in our comments so we want to communicate as much as possible surrounding Windows Vista SP1 and today's release to Windows Update as we can.

For those of you happy to wait, sit tight because SP1 will start downloading to PCs automatically beginning in mid-April (remember, this happens only if you have your Windows Update configured to automatically download updates and SP1 will automatically download but not automatically install).  But if you want to get the benefit of a year's worth of improvements right now, go check Windows Update today (hit the Start Menu, All Programs, and select Windows Update).

If in running Windows Update you do not see Windows Vista SP1 listed, there are a number of good reasons for this (eight, in fact -- see the whole list).  Below are a few of the most common reasons why you might not see SP1 on Windows Update:

• You have not yet installed all the prerequisite packages you need for Windows Vista SP1.  To install them, visit the Windows Update control panel and click on "check for updates."
• You have a pre-release version of SP1 and need to uninstall it before installing SP1
• You already have it.  To determine if you already have SP1 installed, Open the Start Menu, right click on Computer and left click on Properties.
• We released SP1 in these 5 languages:  English, French, Spanish, German, and Japanese.  If you have any other language installed, SP1 will not yet be offered to you.  (You might not even know if you have an additional language installed -- check the Regional and Language Options control panel to see which languages you have installed.)
• Back in February we announced that we'd be using Windows Update to help make the update as seamless as possible for our users.  Windows Update will detect drivers that we know may be problematic when updating to SP1 and will not offer the service pack until an update has been installed.

I've received a lot of requests for more detail about the driver situation this last month, so I want to share some more information here.  We spent the last couple of months looking closely at reports of driver problems on pre-release builds and, to be safe, we held the public availability until March.

We've completed our analysis and are happy to report that many of these issues were fixed between the release candidate (RC) and the final version.  We identified a small number of device drivers that may be problematic after an update from Windows Vista to Windows Vista SP1.  Check out the list here; we'll keep it updated with any additional drivers that we identify.  As a result, we spent the past month or so working with our partners on driver updates for these issues.  Of these drivers, most already have updated versions on Windows Update and are available for download now as optional updates.  In a few weeks we'll start to deliver these updated drivers to PCs automatically via Windows Update.

We're working with the providers of the remaining devices to get updated versions of the drivers to our customers as well.  In the meantime, Windows Update will recognize PCs with drivers that may be problematic and postpone offering SP1 to those PCs until it has installed corrected drivers or other applicable updates.  Either way, Windows Update works to detect whether or not your system is ready for SP1 and not offer it to you until the time is right.

Those of you who find that SP1 isn't offered over Windows Update even after updating all your drivers, but would still like to download it can access our "standalone installer" from the Microsoft Download Center here.  Windows Update will help ensure a better experience, so if you do choose to visit the Microsoft Download Center make sure that you read these KBs before installing.

Looking forward, we're also getting ready to begin releasing the second wave of SP1 languages in April.  These are the other 31 languages that we haven't released yet. 

Some users encountered an issue last month when installing the Servicing Stack Update (KB937287).  We've investigated this carefully and learned that it occurs only in certain rare situations.  Specifically, this happens because the update needs to be completely installed before a restart occurs, but something caused a reboot during the install.  While the update was carefully designed to avoid many of the common reasons for an inadvertent restart during installation, this issue was caused by some that were not caught.  By temporarily suspending automatic distribution, and in making a small change on our Windows Update server, we believe we've largely eliminated this problem (our support call volume reflects this).  We did find one aspect of the problem that was exacerbated when the update was installed using automatic updates.  For this issue, we're planning to release an additional update before we resume automatic distribution of the Servicing Stack Update.

So what does this mean exactly?  For those who've already installed the Servicing Stack Update or are waiting to install SP1 until Windows Update offers it to you automatically, you do not need to do anything at all.  But if you want to install SP1 manually and haven't yet installed the Servicing Stack Update, you'll find it on Windows Update when you visit.

I know this post sounds like a lot of guidance, but we would rather over-communicate to reduce any surprises.

In sum, we are extremely pleased with Windows Vista SP1 and the benefits it offers our customers, and we look forward to hearing about your experience.

The Internet Explorer team hit an important milestone today and divulged as much at MIX08.  IE's General Manager Dean Hachamovitch today announced the availability of IE8 Beta 1, downloadable for testing by all from here.

You can read more on IE8 at the IEBlog, where Dean explains eight specific advances comprised in IE8.

Soon Brandon will have a post up on the Windows Experience Blog talking about his experience using IE8 Beta 1 and what's new in it, so watch for that.

You can get the latest on MIX08 taking place this week in Las Vegas via MIX08 Online.

The following is an article from another of my colleagues on the Windows Vista Sound team, Kristin Carr.  Kristin is a Program Manager and works with Steve Ball, who previously has shared his insights into how Windows Vista handles sound.  If you have questions for Kristin, please leave a comment below.

Many people have a general idea of what S/PDIF is -- perhaps by seeing it as a label on an audio output, or on a feature list for a product.  But what is it exactly, and how do you use it?  This post will cover some of those details.

On a PC, the audio is stored and processed digitally until the final output stage when it is usually converted to an analog signal that directly feeds your speakers.  However, there may be times when you want to transmit the signal digitally to a different device that will be used to play the sound, such as a receiver.  In these cases, you may want to postpone converting the signal to an analog one, and instead transmit the signal digitally to avoid any degradation and additional noise that may occur when transmitting an analog signal.

For this purpose, S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interconnect Format) was developed.  Often referred to by the name of the connector (including Toslink, RCA, or simply "Optical" or "Digital Out"), S/PDIF specifies a method of transmitting a digital signal so that it can be received and interpreted correctly by the connected device.  You may ask yourself, "How complicated is it to transmit a signal?  Why do we need a special protocol?"  Consider that the digital signal consists of a series of bits, and within that series, the bits are grouped to correspond to a sample of audio, and an even larger subset of those are grouped to correspond to a particular channel.  In order to enable a receiver to properly interpret all of those bits in the correct order, it is necessary to have a format for transmitting those bits.  This is where S/PDIF comes in.

S/PDIF can be used to transmit two channels of digital audio in real time over a single connection.  S/PDIF specifies a particular bit pattern that a receiver can use to latch onto the stream.  Once the receiver has synced up with the stream, S/PDIF specifies the order of the audio bits and how they should be arranged in a stream so that the receiver can properly interpret it.

However, there may be times when you wish to transmit more than two channels of audio over the S/PDIF link.  This is where compressed audio can be used.  Audio compression is a technique used to transmit equivalent information using fewer bits.  This is done through a number of techniques.  Some techniques, referred to as perceptual coding, take advantage of the fact that humans can only hear certain sounds.  These methods of compression usually involve discarding bits that only contribute a minimal amount to what a listener needs to recognize a given sound.  Other methods take advantage of numerical redundancies in the signal in order to effectively transmit the same information in a smaller amount of space.  Dolby Digital and DTS are two common types of compression.  Regardless of the technique, compression enables a digital audio signal to use fewer bits to transmit the audio.

The result of this compression is that it enables you to transmit the content for up to 5.1 channels of audio over S/PDIF in space that would have only fit 2 channels if the audio had been uncompressed.  This is great once the signal has been encoded (synonymous with compressed), but once a signal has been encoded, that same signal must also be decoded after it has been received so that it can be sent to speakers.  This means that your receiver must be capable of decoding the compressed audio signal in order for you to hear the correct sound.  This is the tradeoff necessary to allow you to transmit more than two channels of audio over S/PDIF.

Another direct consequence of transmitting a compressed audio signal instead of an uncompressed audio signal (more commonly known as PCM) is that the volume of that signal cannot be modified once it has been encoded.  Because the bits in an encoded signal no longer directly correspond to the volume of that signal, it is impossible to increase the volume until it is decoded.  This explains why your PC cannot control the volume of your sound when you are using Dolby Digital or DTS as the output.  The connected device will be the only place where the volume can be changed.

To recap, in order to avoid the electrical interference and noise present on an analog connection, consider using S/PDIF to transmit the signal digitally.  If you'd like to transmit more than two channels, consider sending encoded content which allows you up to 5.1 channels over S/PDIF.  You may also want to consider HDMI, but that's a post for another time!

[Updated 6 Mar 3:01pm PST]  Apparently this post has created some confusion, which was the opposite of my intent.  Windows Vista SP1 is not delayed.  I repeat, aside from our having accelerated SP1 availability to MSDN/TechNet subscribers and volume licensing customers, there has been no change in the release plan Mike outlined in his post announcing SP1.

For clarity's sake, I'll reiterate our release schedule:

• For the initial five first wave languages (English, Spanish, German, French, and Japanese):
• We will release SP1 to Windows Update and the download center on microsoft.com in mid-March.  Customers running Windows Vista with any of these first languages installed can choose to install SP1 by visiting Windows Update.  If your PC has a language installed other than one of the 5 listed above, SP1 will not be offered.  Additionally, any system that Windows Update determines has a driver Microsoft knows to not update successfully will not be offered SP1.
• In mid-April, we will begin delivering Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers using Automatic Update.  In other words, we will begin automatic downloads of SP1 for customers who have chosen to have updates downloaded automatically.  Note that, as Mike stated, Windows Update will *not* automatically download SP1 to any system it determines has a driver known to not update successfully.  (As updates for the problematic drivers become available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update so that the result is that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but only when we are confident they will have a good experience.)
• MSDN/TechNet Plus subscribers and volume licensing customers have already been provided access to SP1 in first wave languages, as Mike stated in his follow-on post.
• The remaining languages will be released to manufacturing (RTM) in April and availability to customers will follow.

We have some information we'd like to share in regards to Windows Vista SP1 and folks running Language Packs. Some of you may have noticed that after installing Windows Vista SP1 on Windows Vista Ultimate - the Language Packs fail to appear on Windows Update (KB947875).

We will be releasing Windows Vista SP1 in two "waves". The first wave will only provide Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista Ultimate PCs running the following 5 Languages: English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish. The second wave will follow shortly after - supporting all 36 languages.

For Windows Update, PCs running the 5 initial languages from the first wave only will be provided with Windows Vista SP1. PCs running Windows Vista Ultimate with any of the other Language Packs installed will not be offered Windows Vista SP1 through Windows Update until they are released. Once the Language Packs are released, Windows Vista SP1 will then be offered for installation.

When installing Windows Vista SP1 from the standalone installer, the standalone installer will only install on Windows Vista Ultimate running any of the 5 languages from the first wave. When installing Windows Vista SP1 on Windows Vista Ultimate with a Language Pack that is not one of the 5 initial Language Packs supported - you will get the following error (KB947876) when attempting to install Windows Vista with the standalone installer:

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.

This means if you are running a Language Pack that is not one of the 5 initial Language Packs you will not be able to install Windows Vista SP1 until the other Language Packs are released.

But not to worry - the Language Packs are on their way.  We will have more information on exactly when very shortly so stay tuned!