A solution would obviously be to disable automatic updates but that’s probably not a preferred solution by many as well. The easiest way to block the automatic download and installation of both Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is a Registry key that has to be added to the Registry that prevents the installation for twelve months.

The update problems should be sorted out by that time and if they have not been it is still possible to disable automatic updates. To add the entry to the Registry do the following. Press Windows R, type regedit, hit enter.

The Registry opens and we need to navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate and create a new DWORD named DoNotAllowSP there. The value of the DWORD has to be set to 1.

An alternative would be to create a new text document, paste the following three lines into it and rename the document to block.reg afterwards.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
"DoNotAllowSP"=dword:00000001

A double-click creates the new Registry key automatically. The block can be removed by either deleting the Registry key again or by setting the dword value to 0 instead.

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Microsoft today released the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 again this time for all 36 supported languages. This release is available in Windows Update or by downloading it directly from the Microsoft website. Here are the 32-bit and 64-bit download links of Windows Vista Service Pack 1. There is also a DVD release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 that contains both the 32-bit and 64-bit updates. To make matters worse Microsoft released the service pack 1 in iso format and exe format and it really looks a bit confusing if you are a new user, but I guess that’s why Windows Update has been created.

The iso images of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 have to be burned to CD and DVD and can be installed from those after burning them. On the other hand, if you are not going to install the service pack on more than one computer Windows Update might be the easier way to download and install it.

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The most common causes in my opinion are trying to upgrade to Service Pack 1 from a Vista version in an unsupported language, that a beta version of Service Pack 1 is still installed on the system and that vlite was used to create a custom Windows Vista installation DVD.

Even more interesting than those eight causes are the Help and Support options that are available without costs. Microsoft is offering support by email, live chat and even phone (with some limitations). It will be pretty interesting to see if Microsoft can keep the 1 day email response time. Live Chat is only available during certain hours of the day, surprisingly though it is available on Saturdays and even Sundays. Support is available free of charge until March 18, 2009.

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Only five languages will be available when it is released in march, those are English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese. All other languages will not be released before April as well. Manufacturers on the other hand are receiving the Service Pack in the coming days to integrate it with computers that ship with Windows Vista.

You might be asking now why Microsoft is not releasing the Service Pack to customers as well right now and delaying the release for another month. That is a very good question. According to Microsoft the reasons are the following:

There are a couple of reasons for this. Our beta testing identified an issue with a small set of device drivers. These drivers do not follow our guidelines for driver installation and as a result, some beta participants who were using Windows Vista and updated to Service Pack 1 reported issues with these devices. Because the issue was with the way the drivers were installed and not the drivers themselves, the solution was simply to reinstall the drivers. While this worked fine for our more technical beta testers, we want to deliver a better experience for customers as we make the update broadly available.

While we know that most customers who update from Windows Vista to SP1 will NOT be affected, our approach is to improve the experience for all our customers. To do this, we will begin making SP1 available through Windows Update in mid-March, giving us time to work with some of our hardware partners to make adjustments to the installation process for the affected drivers. As SP1 gets delivered through Windows Update, we will only offer it to PCs that we detect don’t have any of the affected device drivers installed. We’re taking the next month or so to continue our work of identifying as many of these devices as possible.

This is only one reason and the blog post is not specifying other reasons why Microsoft might be delaying the release of the first Service Pack for Windows Vista. Guess we all have to wait another month to finally download the final version. All beta and test versions have to be uninstalled before the final version can be installed.

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Both versions of service pack 1 for Windows Vista are shipped as executables and can be installed on any RTM version of Windows Vista, be it 32-bit or 64-bit. I would not suggest to go out and search for this release and install it on a computer that you work with because it is still a beta release and not a final one.

Unpacking the service pack reveals more than 1.7 Gigabyte of data and the installation seems to need three restarts before it finishes. In case you are wondering: I did not install the service pack 1 but found the information at blog.

Read More:

Vista Service Pack 1 Screenshots and Information
nfo from the scene release

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