Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 will be initially available only to users who have installed the English, French, German, Japanese or Spanish language packs, Nick White, a Microsoft program manager said Monday.
Users with one of those five packs will be able to download and install SP1 starting around the middle of this month, but people who have previously installed one of Vista Ultimate's other 31 language packs must wait for what White called SP1's "second wave."
"We will be releasing Windows Vista SP1 in two 'waves'," said White in a post to the Vista team's blog . "The first wave will only provide Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista Ultimate PCs running the following 5 Languages: English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish. The second wave will follow shortly after -- supporting all 36 languages."
White didn't specify a release date for the second wave in the post, but in a comment later, said it would be "likely to occur next month."
Earlier Signs of Delay
His warning, in fact, wasn't completely unforseen. A month ago, when Microsoft said it had wrapped up RTM (release to manufacturing) and was shipping SP1 to duplication, it also spelled out a rough calendar for release. According to that timetable, Ultimate SP1 would appear as an optional download on Windows Update this month with just the five languages, as an automatic update mid-April, and the full 36 packs sometime next month, presumably after the mid-point.
Nor is this the first install glitch caused by the language packs. Last October, Barry Goffe, the director of Vista Ultimate, noted that users had had trouble installing the add-ons, and said an install component had been patched to fix the problem.
On Monday, Microsoft drew a clear line between the delay and an error noted by some users who have already tried to install SP1. Last month, Microsoft handed the update to volume licensing customers, subscribers to a pair of technical IT and developer services, and in a mistake , to some users of the 64-bit version of the operating system. Once they'd installed SP1, those users noticed that the additional language packs had vanished. According to support document KB947875 , the only solution was to uninstall SP1.
White spelled out what would happen this month and beyond with Ultimate and its language packs. Windows Update will show and/or install SP1 only on Ultimate-powered PCs that have a supported language pack, while the standalone installer will return an error if it's run on a PC with one of the not-yet-available packs.
"This means if you are running a Language Pack that is not one of the 5 initial Language Packs you will not be able to install Windows Vista SP1 until the other Language Packs are released, said White.
Vista Ultimate's language packs were part of "Ultimate Extras," an aggressively marketed bonus feature that was to regularly provide add-ons to the top-priced version. Customers, however, became bitter when Microsoft actually released only a few such extras, and complained last year that the company had reneged on its promises.
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