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Microsoft released the final code for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 to manufacturing Feb. 4, and the final product will be made available to its volume licensing customers in March.
But if users want to install it, there is a catch: there are still issues with a small set of drivers, which need to be reinstalled once SP1 is loaded onto their machine.
So, while SP1 will be available via Windows Update from mid-March, if the update system determines that the machine has one of the drivers Microsoft knows to be problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1.
“But, as some customers may want to update to SP1 anyhow, the download center will allow anyone who wants to install SP1 to do so from mid-March,” Mike Nash, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Windows product management, said in a post to the Vista team blog.
Those customers who have opted to have their updates delivered automatically will get SP1 that way starting in mid-April. But, again, any system that Windows Update determines has a driver known to not update successfully will not get SP1 automatically.
“As updates for these drivers become available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update, which will then allow SP1 to be installed,” Nash said.
The RTM of Vista comes on the same day as Microsoft released Windows Server 2008 to manufacturing, and volume licensing customers with Software Assurance coverage or an Enterprise Agreement will be able to download the server software toward the end of February as part of the joint Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 “Heroes Happen Here” launch event.
Vista SP1, which will initially be released in five languages-English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese-addresses many of the key issues that users have identified over the past year.
SP1 brings improvements in reliability and performance
“With Service Pack 1, we have made great progress in performance, reliability and compatibility … I’ve personally been running Windows Vista SP1 pretty exclusively for a few months and I’ve noticed that my systems run faster and more reliably than they did with the ‘Gold’ release of Windows Vista,” Nash said.
He also acknowledged that Vista users had experienced trouble finding applications that worked well on Windows Vista as well as finding the right device drivers for some of the hardware devices that they used.
Vista had made progress on the application and device compatibility front, with 98 of the top-selling 100 applications now having versions available for Windows Vista, while there are 78,000 devices and components supported by Windows Update, up from about 34,000 in November 2006.
“As a result, we have licensed over 100 million copies of Windows Vista to date,” Nash said.
SP1 brings improvements in the reliability and performance of Vista , as well as changes such as speeding up everyday processes like copying or moving files around a PC, home or corporate network.
“Our internal tests found that his could be as much as 50 percent faster in some scenarios, while resuming a Windows Vista-based PC from sleep is also faster with Service Pack 1,” Nash said.
Many business are hopeful that Vista SP1 will deliver the improvements Microsoft has been promising.
OEM partners will be among the first to get SP1 so that new PCs will be able to ship with Vista SP1 pre-installed, while a retail version of Vista with SP1 will be available in stores for new customers in the coming months.
Windows Vista SP1 will be made available in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese by mid-March, with the remaining languages being released to manufacturing in April.
“While Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is an important milestone, we will continue to invest in the continuous improvement process,” Nash said.