Vista SP1 officially available

by Nancy Gohring

March 18, 2008 —

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is available starting Tuesday, a day after Amazon.com
let slip that it would become available this week.

Interested Vista users can manually open Windows Update and download the new
software. Customers who have set Windows Update to automatically download updates
will find the software automatically downloaded to their PCs in mid-April.

If users decide to manually access SP1 now, there's a chance they won't see
it in Windows Update. There could be several reasons for that, according to
the Windows
Vista blog. For example, users of an earlier version of SP1 must first uninstall
the older version before reinstalling the final SP1.

In addition, Windows Update will detect if a user has certain drivers that
must first be updated before installing SP1. Until those users have the updated
drivers in place, Windows Update won't offer SP1.

Initially, SP1 is available in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese.
If a PC has any other language installed, SP1 won't be offered to the user.
Microsoft plans to release the second wave of SP1 in additional languages in
April.

The company has long said that SP1 would come out in the first quarter. A major
hint that the release was imminent came on Monday with an Amazon.com
listing of Windows Vista that included SP1 and said that the product would
be available on Wednesday.

It's been a long trek for Microsoft up to the release of SP1. Microsoft inadvertently
posted SP1 to Windows Update in February, although few people were actually
able to download it from there. Microsoft also had some hiccups with an update
designed as a prerequisite for SP1 that caused some users to get stuck in a
reboot cycle.

Some observers believe that the release of SP1 could boost Vista sales, particularly
among enterprises that have said they're waiting for the update before upgrading
to Vista.

IDG News Service