14 DAY TRIAL // Over six months since the RTM of Windows Vista SP1, Microsoft has made available a new wave of downloads with the gold bits of the service pack. In this manner, Vista SP1 continues toward the finish line of the availability process. Having been released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, along with Windows Server 2008 SP1/RTM, Service Pack 1 for Vista became available on Windows Update and the Download Center on March 18. The Automatic Distribution of Vista SP1 went live on April 23, only to be discontinued due to incompatibility issues, and re-released in May. As of July 16, following extensive preparations from Microsoft, the final bits of Windows Vista SP1 have been published to the Windows Server Update Services.
"You may have noticed that yesterday we made Windows Vista Service Pack 1 available on WSUS to help make it easy for you to deploy into your organization. If you're running English, French, German, Japanese or Spanish language system that has English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, or No MUIs, you should download and approve the package titled: Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Standalone (KB936330) - English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish," stated a member of the WSUS team.
The fact is that Vista SP1 RTM has already been available to WSUS users via the Microsoft Update catalog as of March 25. But until now, WSUS 3.0 RTM and WSUS 3.0 SP1 administrators had to go through the process of importing Vista SP1 packages in order to deploy them. However, with the publishing of the new Vista SP1 standalone packages to WSUS, admins no longer have to hunt through the MU catalog for the service pack.
"Because of some applicability logic in the way the service packs are packaged, if you only download and approve the 'all languages' version, SP1 will not be offered to machines running English, French, German, Spanish or Japanese that has an English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, or No MUIs installed. If you only have these five language systems and MUIs in your organization, we actually recommend you only download and approve the 'Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Standalone (KB936330) - English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish' package since it's much smaller than the 'all languages' version," the WSUS team member added.
Windows XP Service Pack 3 was published to WSUS at the start of May 2008, concomitantly with the general availability, but Vista SP1's release was postponed mainly because of the integration problems with WSUS server running on Windows Server 2003 operating systems. According to Microsoft, Vista SP1 will download over and over again for WSUS on Windows Server 2003 in the absence of the WinVerifyTrust update, a release which the company made mandatory on June 19.
"If you are running an English, French, German, Japanese, or Spanish language system that has a MUI language pack installed you'll need to download and approve the 'all language' version of the service pack," the WSUS team member concluded.