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Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta Download

Martin Brinkmann — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:48:30 +0000

Microsoft is making the betas of the Windows Vista Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 available through their Customer Preview Program. Links are currently up for MSDN subscribers and Technet subscribers with public links announced to follow soon on the very same page.

Windows Vista Service Pack Beta 2 is available in the five languages English, German, Japanese, Spanish and French. Microsoft did publish the release notes for Windows Server 2009 Service Pack 2 Beta and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta already. The release notes do not contain many information at this point but they contain information about incompatible applications and updates which should be updated or installed prior to installing the beta release of the Service Pack.

Users with previous versions of Service Pack 2 have to uninstall that Service Pack before being able to install the beta 2. This is done in the Control Panel as usual. The website where MSDN or Technet subscribers can find their download links and where regular users will find their download links as well is available here. Interested users can also take a look at the updates and patches that are included in both betas of the Service Packs.

It should be noted that this is still a beta release and therefor intended to be installed on development or test computer systems.

Windows Vista SP2 Beta 6002.16497 Released

Martin Brinkmann — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:13:26 +0000

Microsoft released a new beta version with the build number 6002.16497 to Windows Vista Service Pack 2 beta testers who can download the second service pack from Windows Update or Microsoft Connect. The Registry entry that was posted in the last article to download Service Pack 2 from Windows Update is still valid and can be used to update the build from version 105 to 113.

It should be noted though that users have to uninstall the last build before they will be able to download the current one since there is no way of updating the builds on top of each other. Users who have already installed Windows Vista Service Pack 2 105 will have to uninstall it, reboot their computer and connect to Windows Update again where they have to download a series of updates that brings the version of the service pack to 113.

Users who did not install the latest service pack beta can simply apply the Registry keys of the file and connect to Windows Update to bring their Vista operating system to version 113 as well.

It should be made clear that beta releases of service packs should not be installed on computer systems that are needed on a daily basis. This version of the Service Pack will add a Evaluation Copy message on the desktop and expire on 4/2/2010 unless uninstalled before that date.

Windows Vista SP2 Registry Hack

Martin Brinkmann — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:43:12 +0000

Joseph was nice enough to send me the required Registry keys for the Windows Vista SP2 update that was distributed to selected testers on October 16. It is a pre-beta update for testers and not suited for anything else but test systems to test the changes of the new service pack for Windows Vista.

There are not any changes yet that can be identified after installing Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista. The service pack 2 currently contains all released patches and hotfixes that have been already released and several files that are required for future updates that Microsoft will release to testers.

Users who are still interested in testing Windows Vista SP2 can download a batch file that is stored at Mediafire which will add the required keys to the Windows Vista Registry. The computer has to be restarted after executing the batch file before the changes become visible.

Windows Update will present the Vista SP2 Servicing Stack Update first which has to be installed before the actual Vista SP2 becomes available.