Windows Vista SP1 “Collection of published API changes from MSDN”

Microsoft might choose not to tell its enthusiasts anything about Windows Vista Service Pack 1, but they can’t afford to keep it a secret to the development community. For the same reasons some argue SP1 is the Holy Grail for Windows Vista, a newer kernel means changes to a very significant component of an operating system. However since this is a significantly minor update to the kernel compared to what was endured just months ago, APIs have already been added, changed and even obsoleted.

Since Microsoft wouldn’t publish any documentation of their own for the time being, here is a list I’ve compiled from the MSDN Library of all the changes taking effect in Vista SP1 published to-date. Whilst most of these documentation won’t make sense for non-developers (myself included), think of it like reading a foreign-language newspaper - find all the proper nouns then make up the story. 'msdn'

Windows Installer 4.1 (4.0.6001) - "Windows Installer 4.1 updates Windows Installer 4.0 without adding any new features"
Application Compatibility Cookbook - "There are no architectural changes for Windows Vista SP1. Applications that are compatible with Windows Vista RTM should continue to be compatible with Windows Vista SP1."
IPv6 Traffic over VPN Connections - "Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP). SSTP is only supported by Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 (SP1, now in beta testing)" ["Now in beta testing". Doh, another Microsoft typo. I’ll correct it for them, they meant Windows Server 2008.]
Process Afinity - controls which processor a process runs on in a multi-processor environment
- QueryProcessAffinityUpdateMode - "Retrieves the affinity update mode of the specified process."
- SetProcessAffinityUpdateMode - "Sets the affinity update mode of the specified process."
Cryptographic Next Generation (CNG)
- CNG Algorithm Identifiers - Vista SP1 support 2 new Algorithm Identifiers
  - BCRYPT_AES_GMAC_ALGORITHM "AES-GMAC" - "The advanced encryption standard (AES) Galois message authentication code (GMAC) symmetric encryption algorithm."
  - BCRYPT_RNG_DUAL_EC_ALGORITHM "DUALECRNG" - "The dual elliptical curve random-number generator algorithm."
- Cryptography Primitive Property Identifiers - Vista SP1 support 2 new Property Identifiers
  - BCRYPT_CHAIN_MODE_CCM - "Sets the provider’s chaining mode to counter with CBC-MAC mode (CCM)."
  - BCRYPT_CHAIN_MODE_GCM - "Sets the provider’s chaining mode to Galois/counter mode (GCM)."
WdsTransportClient - Windows Deployment Services Transport Client
- WdsTransportClientInitializeSession - "This function only sets up the session, it does not start the transfer. To start the transfer, call WdsTransportClientStartSession."
- WdsTransportClientStartSession - "Initiates a multicast file transfer."
- WdsTransportClientShutdown - "Shuts down the multicast client."
- WdsTransportClientAddRefBuffer - "Increments the reference count on a buffer owned by the multicast client."
- WdsTransportClientReleaseBuffer - "Decrements the reference count on a buffer owned by the multicast client."
- WdsTransportClientWaitForCompletion - "Blocks until either the multicast session is complete or the specified timeout is reached."
- WdsTransportClientQueryStatus - "Retrieves the current status of an ongoing or complete multicast transmission from the multicast client."
- PFN_WdsTransportClientSessionStart - "…called at the start of a multicast session to indicate file size and other server side information about the file to the consumer."
- PFN_WdsTransportClientReceiveContents - "…indicate that a block of data is ready to be used."
- PFN_WdsTransportClientReceiveMetadata - "…optional callback that a consumer may register to receive metadata type information about a file."
- PFN_WdsTransportClientSessionComplete - "…indicate that no more callbacks will be sent to the consumer and that the session either completed successfully or encountered a non-recoverable error."