Vista SP1 is officially available for download now, and if our experience is anything to go by it could be a fiddly process for some people. Don't despair, it doesn’t mean Microsoft doesn't love you - you might just need to do a few reboots.
We now have a fully patched version of Vista with SP1, but it wasn't initially smooth sailing. When we first loaded Windows Update there was no mention of SP1. Granted, this was a brand new machine (HP's spanking new 12.1-inch tx2000 tablet), but was this the infamous driver issue Microsoft has warned about, or something else? (there is a list of problem drivers that won't play nicely with SP1. The update won't appear in Windows Update if your machine has
these drivers installed).
Microsoft lists a
variety of reasons you mightn't be able to get SP1 via the Update tool. If you're really keen you can ignore all this and download the
standalone SP1 installer from the Microsoft Download Center anyway, but we'd caution against this. The standalone file is over 400MB (compared to 69MB for the Update-delivered file), and anyway, you might find the first method works if you persevere.
We ran the update process several times, rebooting at least three times, to install the fairly large list of updates our new machine needed. After the third (or so) reboot - presto! SP1 now appeared in the list of available updates.
It took us about 15 minutes to download SP1 over our wireless network, though keep in mind Windows warns it takes up to an hour to install.
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| Success - what you should be seeing in Windows Update |
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| Click to enlarge - A few modest claims, and we're underway |
