Vista SP1 Not Showing Up In Windows Update? It’s For Your Own Good.
There are reports of people not being able to get Vista SP1 via Windows Update. While this may sound weird, that’s a good thing because one of the things that Windows Update will do is check to see if you have anything on your system that may cause a problem when upgrading to SP1. Microsoft has a document on the reasons that cause you not to see Vista SP1 that you should read if you run into this problem. The most common reason seems to be driver related (as a lot of Vista issues are caused by drivers that are not up to snuff) and Microsoft has a list of drivers known to be bad actors in the document that I referenced above. Most seem to be sound card related, but there are also reports of Nvidia drivers doing the same thing (although we have several computers that run Vista with Nvidia cards and we have not seen this in house).
The question is, why is Microsoft doing this? In short, it doesn’t want to make Vista any more hated than it already is. They’ve actually listened to feedback from customers (read: corporate customers who pay them a lot of money in licensing fees) and have built SP1 to inflict as little pain as possible. It checks your system up front and refuses to install if it thinks that bad things will happen. So the bottom line is this: If you’re inconvenienced for a bit while you update your drivers and get your system ready for SP1 to install properly, then in my humble opinion that is better than SP1 trashing your system. Sure there are ways around this, but if I were you I would not use them. After all you want your system to work properly, right?
March 21, 2008 at 1:42 pm
yeah I heard that I could get sp1 through windows update in mid-April. is this true?
P.S. check out my post on sp1 at http://www.nickstechblog.wordpress.com
March 22, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Vista Service Pack 1 was released March 18, 2008
March 23, 2008 at 12:02 pm
[…] Vista blog), My Nightmare trying to upgrade to SP1 (Insightful look into incompatible drivers), Vista SP1 update not showing up is for your own good (Reasons why SP1 may not be available yet for some people), SP1 Now available, Delayed, Delayed, […]
March 25, 2008 at 8:48 am
In Device Manager I checked for updates for all my devices and they are all up-to-date. However, still no SP1 in my WU. I’m running Vista Home Premium.
March 26, 2008 at 12:33 am
Hiding some Windows updates can cause SP1 to not show up. I had hidden the optional updates for the numerous language packs because I thought I would never need them. Restoring those hidden updates immediately made SP1 show up for me. Downloading now…
April 3, 2008 at 1:21 pm
interesting.. my built in dell m6300 laptops fingerprint reader driver is on that list.. but when you have it search online – no new driver is available (until of course I go to upeks site and get one). then it took a removal of the old device and a rescan after the install of the new driver to get it to show the right version)
April 11, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Just now the mid-april update showed up on WU, downloading it right now.
April 14, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Why can’t Microsoft just tell us what the problem IS , instead of letting us try to figure it out by trial and error? Still doesn’t show up for me.