Kernel Transaction Manager (KTM) Before Vista, applications had to do a lot of hard work to recover from errors during the modification of files and registry keys. Windows Vista implements a generalized transaction manager called the Kernel Transaction Manager (KTM) which provides “all or nothing” transaction semantics. This... Read more

Up until Vista, an application or a driver could prevent the system from entering a sleep mode (standby or hibernate) and was often caused by a bug or an overly aggressive power management policy. The problem with this was that the user might not know the system hasn’t entered the... Read more

Delayed AutoStart Services There are a lot of services that are set to autostart that aren’t needed by the boot process. Unfortunately these services start at boot time and login time, which can severely impact login performance. Vista solves this by allowing services that can request a delayed autostart.... Read more

Interactive Logon Architecture Vista changes the logon architecture and replaces GINAs with Credential Providers. Credential providers are easier to write than GINAs and plug in to the logonui.exe. The biggest advantage of Credential Providers (besides being easier to write) are that multiple concurrent providers are supported and can... Read more

Boot Configuration Database (BCD) **Vista unifies the boot mechanism to be platform independent. The information stored in the boot.ini file is now replaced by the BCD, which abstracts the firmware and is unified across different OS installations. The BCD also uses Unicode strings to support internationalization. To help ensure... Read more