When Microsoft announced that Vista SP1 had completed earlier this week I was a little bit excited. The disappointment came when I read that it wouldn’t be ready for public consumption until the middle of March due to issues select users have with drivers.
Microsoft didn’t give any information as to what the build number was of the final version, which hindered the spread of the Service Pack through back channels such as the BitTorrent network. There was some rumored build numbers, but a quick screenshot by Paul Thurrott who got Vista SP1 RTM confirms what the build number really is: 6001.18000! That’s the same build that was released weeks ago to a private group of testers, and was branded as Vista SP1 RC Refresh 2.
Various methods of acquiring this build have been all over the Internet for weeks, including a way to get it through Windows Update. Standalone installers are also blanketing the file sharing sites (*cough* Pirate Bay *cough*) over the last few days, and can be found by searching for Vista SP1 6001.18000. The English-only download weighs in at about 434MB.
Paul’s screenshot, as seen above, was taken from this Windows Registry location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
You can pull up that Registry location to see what version of Vista or Vista SP1 you’re currently running. Here are the important things that you’ll want to verify:
BuildGUID: 28f47544-6618-4bc4-a11e-ed7d7d66e144
BuildLab: 6001.longhorn_rtm.080118-1840
BuildLabEx: 6001.18000.x86fre.longhorn_rtm.080118-1840
CSDBuildNumber: 1616
CSDVersion: Service Pack 1
CurrentBuild: 6001
Anyone running illegal copies of Vista may want to think twice before installing SP1. Microsoft has patched the OEM BIOS crack, and after reading through some of the comments on the Torrent sites I see that a lot of people with the crack are being forced to activate their machine.
Now we’ll have to wait and see whether Microsoft decides to officially release Vista SP1 any sooner since it’s already available through other not-so-official methods.
It seems to be like when i installed RTM in december 2006, not february 2007. And 3 days ago I installed and succesfully activated SP1 x64 with their hole with OEM keys. Not need to wait until official public release.
Most OEM hacks still works
Does this need to be uninstalled when Microsoft releases SP1 on its own, or will Windows Update see SP1 as being already installed?
I still don’t understand why people are installing pirated versions of SP1 for Vista… there’s a distinct possibility that it is corrupted, hacked, cracked, infected, or not the real thing. There’s a thousand different things that could adversely affect an otherwise stable system by installing a torrent of Vista SP1…
At least that’s what I think. I’ll be waiting until Microsoft releases the DL on their Download site to the public. At that point it will be worked out and stable and legitimate.
I’m actually working on getting a hacked system up and running so that I can try it myself. Thanks for the heads up though.
No, you shouldn’t have to uninstall it. This is the final product and will not be changed prior to public availability.
It’s possible to have it installed via Windows Update though, which is the hack that originally emerged. All it does is modify two registry keys, and you can see exactly what it is doing if you want. Then the downloads are pulled straight from Microsoft.
OK. I checked my registry and the RC 2 refresh I’m running show exactly the build numbers in Paul’s screenshot. So I guess the RC was in fact the same as RTM.
Yup, that was our conclusion as well.
i have a dell oem version of vista and the sp1 works just fine