14 DAY TRIAL // Having introduced the first pre-beta testing version of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 all the way back in mid-July 2007, Microsoft has come quite a long way since. The company went public with the testing process of Vista SP1 in December of the past year, making available for download the Release Candidate build of the service pack. January 2008 brought with it two Refreshes to Vista SP1 RC, the first of which was dropped to all Vista users, with Vista SP1 RC Refresh 2 limited to only 15,000 testers via Microsoft Connect. According to Microsoft, Vista SP1 brings to the table a wide range of improvements in terms of performance, stability, reliability, security, compatibility, etc.
But one thing that Vista SP1 does not deliver are the updated Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Help files. That's right, the standalone packages of Vista SP1 have been stripped of the Vista SP1 Help files. If end users want to access the resources, they will have to perform a manual installation of the missing items. Microsoft revealed that the Help files have been scraped from the standalone packages in an effort to reduce the size of the downloads.
"The updated Windows Vista Help file packages are named 'Update for Help Files.' These files are packaged separately for each language. The updated Help files have been excluded from the stand-alone packages to reduce the size of the packages. However, the updated Windows Vista Help files are contained in the integrated SKUs of Windows Vista SP1. Therefore, a clean installation of Windows Vista SP1 does not require an updated Help file for the base language," Microsoft explained.
Users will have to manually add the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Help files, if they deploy Vista SP 1 via Windows Update, or through Microsoft Update Standalone (MSU) package. The same is valid for SKUs of Vista Enterprise and Ultimate, after a new language is installed through a language package. But at the same time, removing a language pack will also result in having to manually install the "Update for Help Files" package.
"The MSU package for 'Update for Help Files' will be released through the Microsoft Download Center. Additionally, the same updates will be released through Windows Update for all languages. However, the 'Update for Help Files' packages are built under the same Microsoft Knowledge Base article number, KB 937286. Therefore, if a system has more than one language installed and also has the corresponding 'Update for Help Files' packages installed, Windows Vista Software Explorer displays multiple entries of KB 937286. Additionally, the title of the package will not display the language of the package," Microsoft concluded.