Windows OS

If you are not offered Vista SP1 from Windows Update, and you are using an Intel WiFi card (typically with model numbers of 4965AGN/4965AG or 3945ABG/3945BG/3965ABG/3965BG), please grab this full generic "reference" driver package from Intel to fix your wireless issues, here. 99.99% of the time, these drivers will work on any laptop or desktop with these chipsets.

Originally spotted here.

In general, if you are running a version of the wireless drivers with a revision date older than 2008, you should install this driver package ASAP. Although it doesn't specifically mention it in the release notes, many little quirks and problems have been resolved, including the Vista SP1 "blocking" issue.

Just to make sure Vista SP1 doesn't get a bad reputation due to this, the "block" was put in place on purpose due to a bug in the wireless driver package, not the OS.

Vista x86/32-bit can be downloaded from here.

Vista x64/64-bit can be downloaded from here.

XP x86/32-bit can be downloaded from here.

XP x64/64-bit can be downloaded from here.

Itanium Catalyst 8.4 drivers cannot be downloaded from anywhere, because they don't exist.

You can read the release notes here.

I'm excited (to say the least) about what I have seen of Silverlight 2.0, but Silverlight 1.0 is still a good release and this update makes it a little better. It is mainly bug fixes and performance improvements, but I always like to stay up to date on any browser-related plug-in, especially Flash and other known infection vectors.

The Windows Search 4 team here at the MVP Summit talked about a cool little gadget that allows you to control the built-in index search engine from the sidebar in Vista. If you are running Windows Search 4, you can also kick off a reindex operation on the fly.

Other options available include 'pause', 'resume' and a running tally of the objects that have been indexed.

If you want to try it out, go over to Brandon Paddock's website here and download it here.