Vista Service Pack 1 Considerations

[Today's post comes to us courtesy of Justin Crosby and Chris Puckett]

If you are considering updating your Windows Vista machines to Service Pack 1 please review this KB article that explains reasons you may not see the update available for download on Windows Update and/or Automatic Updates: https://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;948343.

Pay close attention to Cause/Method 5.  If you have one of the problem drivers be sure that you update your drivers before installing Windows Vista SP1. 

If you are using WSUS to update your clients, Vista SP 1 has not been released to WSUS as a Service Pack at this time.  Therefore, Vista computers updated via WSUS will not be offered Vista SP 1 at this time.  Vista SP 1 will flow to WSUS servers as a service pack at a later date.  However, there is a way to manually import Vista SP 1 into your WSUS server if you wish to push it out sooner.  For the details on this, check out the WSUS blog. https://blogs.technet.com/wsus/archive/2008/03/24/deploying-vista-sp1-into-a-wsus-3-0-server-part-ii.aspx

This process applies to WSUS 3.0 RTM and SP1 servers only. WSUS 2.0 does not integrate with the Microsoft Update Catalog site, therefore the steps do not apply to that particular WSUS release. In this case, you have two options. One is to wait until Vista SP1 flows automatically at a later date or upgrade to WSUS 3.0 or 3.1.