Confessions of a Microsoft Consultant : SP1

Getting my bits in a twist

Daniel Oxley — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:04:35 GMT

This week I installed a new Windows Vista virtual machine in Hyper-V. I installed the OS, added it to the domain, then realised that I had not added the integration services for the guest OS. Launching the install for them gave me the following error message which I had not seen before.

As far as I was concerned I had installed Windows Vista with Service Pack 1, something which winver.exe confirmed, but the components still refused to install. I started thinking it was a bug in RC1 of Hyper-V, so I set about to write up a query with the internal help email list we have. I opened up the system information screen to compile the info for my email when I noticed my mistake...

Without realising, I had put the Windows Vista x64 DVD into the drive rather than the x86 version. Consequently, I had installed Windows Vista 64bit, for which Hyper-V does not have the integration services available. :-(

Back to square 1 then. It is always a nice feeling to realise that you have lost an hour or so because of doing something rather silly. Sigh...

Uninstalling the uninstall

Daniel Oxley — Wed, 28 May 2008 23:25:47 GMT

Windows Vista is a pretty big install, and then when you add to it the install of Service Pack 1, it becomes even bigger. So, once you have been running Service Pack 1 for a while, you can safely remove the uninstall files for the Service Pack. Doing so should save you around 1Gb of disk space as well! :-)

Simply run the command wsp1cln.exe from an elevate command prompt and then let it do its stuff.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Virtual 'Roundtable'

Daniel Oxley — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:56:00 GMT

Do you want to join in with an interactive live virtual roundtable session with Mark Russinovich about Windows Vista Service Pack 1? He'll be hosting an interactive virtual roundtable which will be broadcast live over the Internet on Wednesday, March 5th. He will be talking about Windows Vista, Service Pack 1 and deployment of Windows Vista. Joining him will be "independent industry experts and IT pros from organizations that have already deployed Windows Vista - all openly discussing known challenges, solutions and workarounds, and sharing tips & tricks".

Go to http://ms.istreamplanet.com/events at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time on March 5th and ask your questions live during the event. If you want to submit your question in advance you can do that by e-mailing your question to vrtable@microsoft.com anytime between now and the day of the event.

For those of you who don’t know Mark, check out his blog at http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich