My Notes to Myself and Others... : SP1

Windows Vista SP1 available (since Tuesday)

Erik Rozman — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:24:25 GMT

Yes I know,a bit late and no I don't want to get a haircut(you know who you are).

So after these cryptic messages do I have something new to tell you about this release?
Not really,except that finally all those holding out until SP1 can finally install Vista and
that SP1 comes packed with a few new cool features (e.g. the ability to apply Bitlocker
encryption to all volumes including flash based ones...).

In addition to that you may also want take a look at the list of incompatible drivers that
may block the SP from being installed:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=948343

So if you have the time and you finally want to become SP1ed take the plunge!!

Vista SP1 is available on TechNet Plus and MSDN

Erik Rozman — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 09:13:37 GMT

Based on a post from the TechNet Plus team SP1 for vista is available for subscribers. In addition
to that it is also available to MSDN subscribers:

Reclaiming disk space after Vista SP1 installation

Erik Rozman — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:23:00 GMT

After thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that this deserves a post of it's own.

The installation process of SP1 for Vista backs up all the files that it replaces
to allow you to uninstall it. If you are in dire need of free disk space you can use
an integrated tool called Vsp1clean.exe (aka SP1 File Removal Tool).

This tool will remove all the files that the installation backed up providing you with
the additional disk space at the price of not being able to uninstall the service pack.

So we will start with a copy of Windows Vista that has SP1(RTM) applied to it:

The uninstall option

To uninstall the service pack, all you have to do is to choose the package form Control Panel>
Programs and Features.

After the installation of the SP my drive C: has 6.84GB free:

Freeing up some disk space

We have made up our mind-we will never go back,never uninstall the SP and we want the disk space back!
To do this we can use a tool installed by the SP: %windir%\system32\vsp1cln.exe .

The following arguments can be used:

/o: <path to an offline Windows>
/Verbose - Didn't see a difference
/quiet - Skips the are you sure question...

This is what it looked like on my system:

After the cleanup, the free space grew to 7.6GB (approximately 800MB vacated...not bad):

Uninstall option is gone:

Conclusion

Considering hard drive sizes I see no real and immediate benefit in deleting the backed up files at the
price of losing the ability to uninstall the service pack (note that I wrote immediate). Once the dust
around your specific installation settles down (everything is working as planned) I see no reason
for you to keep on saving the files that allow rollback.

Another point to keep in mind here is that by keeping these files you give yourself a comfort zone of
a few hundred MBs in case you ever run out of disk space...

As Alun Jones pointed out in a comment to the post,users having a pre-release version of the SP installed
should be careful here,if they remove the files they will not be able to uninstall the pre-release version
(which has to be done to enable installation of the released version).

Windows Automated Installation Kit 1.1

Erik Rozman — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:38:19 GMT

With support for Vista's SP1 and Windows 2008.

New features in the Windows AIK

Supports Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008
Supports for Windows Server 2008 ServerManagerCmd.exe. Documents how to build answer files for the Server Manager CLI used to install and to remove Windows Server 2008 roles, role services, and features.
Support for Windows Server 2008 ICT (Initial Configuration Tasks). Documents schema definitions how to add tasks, links, and branding material to the out-of-box experience.
Supports Windows Setup cross-platform deployment. You can install 64-bit version of Windows from a 32-bit preinstallation environment WinPE.
Contains Windows PE 2.1.
- Boot from Hard Disk. Support for booting directly from the hard disk, not into RAM Disk.
- Oscdimg tool. Updated features including support for larger images.
- Writable RAM drive. When booting from read-only media, Windows PE automatically creates a writable RAM disk (drive X) and allocates 32 megabytes (MB) of the RAM disk for general-purpose storage. You can customize the size up to 512 MB using PEImg /scratchspace.
Contains several new tools (%programFiles%\Windows AIK\Tools\<platform>)
- Driver Package Installer (DPInst). Add non-boot critical drivers during Windows Setup using the Driver Package Installer (DPInst)
- Boot critical driver projection tool (PostReflect.exe).
- Windows Vista SP1 Files Removal Tool (VSP1Cln.exe). Remove archived Vista RTM files and reclaim disk space after Windows Vista SP1 is applied.
- Windows Deployment Services Multicast (WDSmcast.exe). WDSmcast.exe is used by computers to join multicast transmissions offered by a Windows Server 2008 based WDS (Windows Deployment Server). More about this in an upcoming blogpost...
Contains Windows Vista Deployment Error Diagnostic Guide. Describes how to diagnose error logs related to deploying Windows Vista, specifically how to interpret errors related to Windows Setup (Setup.exe) and Package Manager (Pkgmgr.exe).

Download it here.

Vista SP1 deployment rants...

Erik Rozman — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 08:54:11 GMT

So since SP1 is finally final, I started playing around with it. One of the most important
features for me was the ability to deploy it. So,wanting to hear it from the horses mouth,
I downloaded the Windows Vista SP1 Guides for IT Professionals.

After going over it I found a few points that surprised me:

No option to slipstream. Integrating the SP into the OS is not possible although
a version that will have SP1 integrated will be made available (?!?).
The SP can not be applied to an offline copy of Windows. This is kind of obvious
if you read the previous point but still,considering that many people use images (WIM)
to deploy desktops having to install it online and then recapturing the image seems
to be somewhat questionable in the light of the automation features (such as offline
driver integration) that WIM images provide...
Still in the image department, if you create an image (or apply the SP to an existing image,
which is more or less the same) you have to run the Boot critical driver tool (PostReflect.exe).
To be honest, I don't (yet) understand the exact reason as for why you have to run this tool
except the reason provided in the document:

"This is necessary because SP1 contains boot-critical drivers for the hardware abstraction layer (HAL) and matching changes to the kernel. If the updated versions of boot-critical drivers for the HAL and the kernel are not correctly installed on the computer that you are deploying SP1 to, the operating system will not boot on that computer or on any computer that has a different CPU or hardware configuration."

Now that is even more surprising since Vista is considered as an OS that is hardware independent...

On the brighter side of things, an additional tool that can be found either in the new version of the AIK or
%windir%\system32 called Vsp1cln.exe will allow you to clean up all the files that SP1 backs up during the
installation (approximately 800MB).

This tool can be used either online or offline but once it is used you can no longer uninstall SP1 (which is also
kind of obvious, so make your choice wisely).