Windows Vista SP2 is live, ready to download
By Thomas Ricker 
posted May 26th 2009 7:21AM
posted May 26th 2009 7:21AM
Face it: in between waiting for Windows 7 to launch and tweaking the XP build on your newly purchased netbook, there's this little thing called Windows Vista that needs to be maintained. Today, Microsoft did its part and released the standalone installers for the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Service Pack 2 for Vista and Server 2008. Now it's all up to you. Hit the read links to patch the Wow with a little SP2 Meh.[Thanks, Justin W.]
Read -- 32-bit
Read -- 64-bit
there is an windows update, just like sp1 that preps things for the final arrival. I just skipped it and downloaded the sp2 standalone.
So, does this fix the Wireless Zero Configuration bullshit nonsense that would happen on Vista and was unfixable?
Where if on a wireless connection, it would lag every 60 seconds on the dot?
Service packs don't appear in the windows update. You will have to follow the link and do it the old fashioned way : )
Since it's not mandatory, or a major security patch it's not in Winupdate.
Sounds odd to me too, but hey.
I got my service pack. Seems nice... I don't see any differences. lol.
Which brings me to my conclusion of why 6 is afraid of 7...
Why would Microsoft, be afraid of Microsoft...?
That doesn't make a lot of sense.
Was windows 98 afraid of windows 2000? Nope...
MS has this all planned out.
I'll be hanging onto my Vista for a while.
I know, blasphemy! But vista works just fine for me. I didn't see any major improvements in 7. Actually, my Vista rig is faster.
@windblownmonkey:
Because seven ate nine.
Oh jeeze this pisses me off...I upgraded my moms computer (she wanted the streaming netflix support in WMC) I went through 79 updates...then they release sp2. F***.
hahaha
neat
Anything special that the Windows Vista SP2 beta folks need to do when we upgrade to the official version of Windows Vista SP2? I remember reading something about uninstalling SP2 beta before upgrading to SP2 official or something? I don't know...
Is it on torrents yet? I don't want Microsoft to "validate" my OS... hehe
DAH HA HA HA HA!
I get it, like, "Validate". VaaaaaliDATE!
Oh, wait, no, you're just a douche.
I don't believe validation is necessary...anyway...as long as you have a genuine serial from microsoft it don't matter.
Noted the above and downloaded and installed the 32 version without any (apparent) problem. That said, without out (apparent) improvements either, so let's just assume its all 'under the hood' stuff and live with that.
Certainly the end result was less-problematic than some 'enjoyed' with an OS Update from the Other Guys not too long ago.
As for Win7, it'll be at least this time next year before the SP1 lands on that OS (at which time making the OS actually usable), so today's download is worth the trouble, I guess.
(Oh, and did I mention I'm composing this comment off my 'old' Linux ASUS Eee 701 at a wifi hotspot - without any issues whatsoever....)
I know I'm getting old when a service pack gets me excited. Well, I'm off to go download it and see what goodies are in store for me.
I have four words for you: developers developers developers developers
I've been using 64 bit SP2 for about 3 weeks so far, and things have been very smooth. SP2 made Vista a bit snappier than before.
I won't be upgrading(?) to W7 until there are good games that support DX11 and highend graphic card for DX11 becomes affortable.
It makes me laugh when people slate Vista and bang on about windows 7, its like only a 10% improvement solely as it is a chopped down version of Vista. I have run Vista since it first came out and had no problems. The only thing I have removed is the search and indexing services. you can go one further and install Game Booster.
has anyone installed this on a "genuine" (if you get what i mean) version of vista?
oh my god haha thats funny just yesterday i updated to service pack 1. of course the very next day.
my media center works now on my tx2500, all seems well.
Really, I haven't had any big pain in the ass probloms with Vista-64-bit. As a gamer, the only thing that bugs me is that XP gets better performance in games... But everything else works perfectly fine.
(downloading SP2)
I installed SP2 for 64-bit today ... and I can't see any of the visual improvements mentioned at the beginning of the comments. weird.
that said ... it does feel snappier.
my laptop comes with NVIDIA graphics & 4GB of RAM ... so aside from the random hiccups with drivers ... I've liked Vista.
I think SP2 patches your uxtheme.dll or something because after installing my custom theme stopped working but original Aero is fine.
It doesn't "patch" your uxtheme.dll, it most likely replaces your patched version with a newer (unpatched) version. This is expected when installing a service pack. You'll have to wait for a patcher that supports the new version now.
I am happy about this update. I Definitely Download the Service Pack In my laptop Soon, hope i see an improvement.
So I got it....not much a difference, if there's any at all. Views??
So I downloaded and installed it but now my Dell XPS M1530 wont boot, even in Safe Mode or Last Good Configuration. It hangs during what I believe is phase 3 of the update process. It first failed on item 2707/52211, but now it hangs on item 140/52211.
I had my machine configured for dual boot with Vista Premium_32 and Ubuntu 9.04_64. The partitioning is what I think caused the problem, but I don't know where to go from here. Luckily, I can still boot into Ubuntu.
The Vista Installation disk (startup repair) says that it is incapable of automatic repair. It appears my only option is a clean install, but I'm currently deployed and don't have a great way to backup my files and settings. If I can't find a good way to restore the installation as is, I'll likely switch to Win 7 RC.
I'm open to suggestions from the crowd.
If you can't get your hands on a flash drive or an external hard drive (if you have alot of stuff to backup), beg one of your buddies to temp store your stuff on their machine. Make an adhoc wireless connection if you don't have a network, crossover cable, or anything else better.
Alternatively, you could boot to Ubuntu and copy your important files to that partition and re-install Vista (or Windows 7), tell it to leave your Ubuntu install alone, and pray it doesn't mess it up. I expect grub would be removed by Windows, but as long as you can put it back, you'd be ok.
Should have been a reply to Rob. You really have to watch whether or not it takes (or loses) that click.
Extra mirrors here: http://save.webmok.dk
Full speed, no spy-ware.
Tried to install this twice.
Received a catastrophic failure (couldn't they word this less 'catastrophicly'?) twice.
Nice.
So I installed this last night on my desktop and now it says that I dont have any optical drives...i have both a factory dvd+/-rw and a sony blu-ray drive and neither can be found any1 else have this prob?
i got burned by the 0x80004005 error.
Seems like MS is back at its shady practices. they force me to use tier disk to do the partition when any linux distro does a 10X good job at partitioning "my" hard disk.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971204/
i guess, yet another reason why I should avoided vista.
That truely sucks. I'm glad I didn't have my Vista box set up dual boot. I mess with linux on that system using Sun's virtuabox software. My laptop is dual boot Xp and Mandriva. They seem to run about equally, though the browser performance feels a bit better on the linux side.
Yeah, and it breaks eset antivirus. Their temp solution, downgrade eset.
Had to do system restore after install, my advice, wait...
can we download the Service Pack 2 if we dont even have Service Pack 1 yet?