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If you’ve been using Windows Vista for a while, you probably know various pains of using it. Vista Service Pack 1 fixes most of these issues, and is already handed over to selected few testers. Microsoft plans to roll-it out to all users at sometime early next year, but for impatient users like me, this is totally unacceptable.
Of course, you can take the risky way of downloading the service pack from some torrent site. Another option to legally install SP1 Beta would be to apply the Windows Update Hack and download it via Windows Update. Here’s how you do it:
- Download SP1Beta_Hack.cmd and run it with the Administrator Privileges (choose "Run as Administrator" from the right-click menu). You should see a successful message displayed on screen in Command Prompt.
- Now run Windows Update and Check for updates. It should show you the KB935509 hotfix. Download it and restart your computer. Run Windows Update for the second time and Check for updates. This time around you should find another update called KB937287. After downloading the second update, restart and run Windows Update for the third time. This time you’ll download KB938371 hotfix.
- Restart your computer and run Windows Update for the last time. Windows Update may not show SP1 in the first try, so keep trying until your get it. After you complete all the above steps, you should see this dialogue:
SP1 adds an annoying watermark saying "Evaluation copy, Build 6001" to the bottom right of your desktop. You can remove this watermark easily. Refer this page for more details.
Thanks for the tip, Karthik [Via: Nero's Club]
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wrote, on October 15th, 2007
good tip for vista users…i still don’t find vista convincing enough..
wrote, on October 16th, 2007
Interesting option there. I think I’ll wait though before installing the service pack because I’m sure they’ll make 300 changes before they release the final one!
Thanks
wrote, on October 16th, 2007
Seems a bit risky for me. Knowing Microsoft, they’ll be glad to hunt down and subsequently destroy any PC doing this. Even so, this is a pretty awesome tip, and I’ll definitely be recommending it.
wrote, on November 15th, 2007
The real Vista SP1 has been released to testers just now… I’ve downloaded the build and it seems very different to the one that we downloaded with the trick… May be you see if the trick works now, since you may get the real one now!!
I always thought the normal Windows Update was good enough!!
wrote, on February 22nd, 2008
nice tip, thanks