Oops! Microsoft Accidentally Releases Vista SP1

Here's the latest dish: Microsoft this week accidentally pushed out the 64 bit version of the Vista SP1 RTM through Windows Update.

On Thursday, "a build of Vista SP1 was posted to Windows Update and it was inadvertently made available to a broad group. The build was intended only for our more technically advanced testers, and was meant to only be offered to those with a specific registry key set on their PC," a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email to ChannelWeb.

The gaffe comes after Microsoft was excoriated by customers and partners in early February for choosing to withhold Vista SP1 from the public until mid-March because of device driver issues, a stance from which it backed off last week when it made Vista SP1 available to beta testers, and TechNet, MSDN, and volume licensing customers.

Microsoft is still planning to make SP1 broadly available in the mid-March timeframe, according to the spokesperson.

Microsoft on Friday also offered three workarounds to testers who've been experiencing technical difficulties with the servicing stack update from Windows Update (KB937287), which Microsoft stopped distributing earlier this week after reports that it was causing machines to enter an endless reboot loop.

According to the article, to solve the problem, users can: Start Windows Vista by using the Windows installation media, and then select the "Repair your computer" option; or start the computer in safe mode, and then use the Repair or System Restore feature; or rename the Pending.xml file, and then edit the registry.