Microsoft's Vista SP2 Release Candidate

Microsoft has released the Vista SP2 Release Candidate. I've had a chance to give it a quick go and here's what I've found.

Service Pack 2 is not a cumulative update, so you'll need to ensure that computer is already running Service Pack 1 Hotfix KB955430. The stand-alone SP2 executable for Administrators includes this update as part of the installation, but people planning to install SP2 via Windows Update Service will need to pre-install this.

Installation takes about 25 minutes on an average Vista machine, and takes up about 1GB of disk space. You can to recover about 300+MB of that space by running the compcln.exe command, but that removes your ability to un-install the service pack. So you don't want to do that right away in case you need to backtrack for some reason. Use the computer for a couple of weeks, and if all goes well, maybe you can clean it up then.


Vista SP2 has support for Via 64-bit processors, integrated Blu-Ray recording, support for Bluetooth 2.1, the integration of Windows Connect Now capabilities and improved integrated wireless LAN capabilities. This last improvement means faster Wi-Fi reconnections when returning the OS from a sleep state. Vista SP2 also automatically upgrades to Windows Search 4.0. This provides improved stability and speed, as well as faster sorting and grouping in Windows Explorer. For Administrators Vista SP2 delivers more group policy controls over power management functions, too.

Overall I'm impressed. It's almost as good as Windows 7.

Microsoft has yet to announce a specific date for the public release of this important service pack. So check back here often, I'll keep you posted.