Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 05 February 2008 01:16
Opinion and Analysis
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So Microsoft has sent Vista SP1 to the disc-stamping plants, but users have to wait another five or six weeks before it will be available for download.
Given how eager the market is for SP1 - it's not uncommon to hear of sites that have a policy of not deploying major new versions of software until the first service pack appears - this additional delay will be a source of frustration.
But it won't be as frustrating as installing SP1 only to find that your computer stops working properly. Though it must be said that there's always that risk whenever you update an operating system.
The problem with Vista SP1, it seems, is related to drivers. According to the
Windows Vista Blog, beta testing uncovered "a small set of device drivers" that cause problems when SP1 was installed. Mike Nash, corporate VP of Windows product management, wrote "Because the issue was with the way the drivers were installed and not the drivers themselves, the solution was simply to reinstall the drivers."
So Microsoft is spending a month or so working with its hardware partners to make sure that their driver installation process works correctly. When SP1 becomes available on Windows Update, it will not be offered to systems with drivers known to cause problems. (If you're prepared to manually reinstall the drivers, you'll be able to manually download SP1.)
I would have thought that any Vista customer large enough to have internal or outsourced IT staff would prefer to get hold of SP1 immediately in order to begin their own pre-deployment testing.
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