How To Hack Vista So Service Pack 1 Beta Installs Automatically…

The biggest OS launch in Microsoft’s history is Vista. But with Vista, comes a number of headaches.

Many people complain that it’s slow, incompatible with devices and hardware and a multitude of different problems. To address these issues, Microsoft has decided to launch a service pack 1 sometime in December or January. But if you want a sneak peek on what the service pack will contain and how work on your system, here is a hack that will help you get it today.

Before you load Service Pack 1 beta on your machine, be sure to back up everything on your hard drive that you want to keep. I haven’t heard of anyone hosing a hard drive using this method. But I don’t want to be held responsible if anything happens to you. I do not know if there is some sort of legal ramifications for installing it. So just use your best judgment. So back up and used the your own risk.

I adapted Nero’s Club’s method of Dowloading Vista SP1 Beta Through Windows Update for these procedures.

The first step is to create a text document on your desktop and paste the following into it:

@echo off
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\VistaSp1 /v Beta1 /t REG_SZ /d a2c3c14a-9586-4d37-9aaa-79fbd64069d2 /f
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\VistaSP1 /v Beta1 /t REG_SZ /d a2c3c14a-9586-4d37-9aaa-79fbd64069d2 /f echo Vista SP1 registry key has been set. Please check for updates in Windows Update.

Once you’ve pasted in this snippet, save your document and then rename it as: SP1BetaRK_ext.cmd

Once that is complete you can go ahead and double-click the file. It is a batch file that will add some entries into the registry.

Run Windows Update

Once the registry entry is complete, go to your start menu and run Windows update. On the Windows update screen you will see a check for updates item to the upper left. Click that and refresh the number of updates you need.

Install the pre-update items

I found that I had to update three times before the service pack 1 Beta option became available. This took a couple of reboots but I would say all in all about 20 minutes worth of installing.

Finally, the service pack one Beta option did appear.

What is interesting is to service pack one weighs in at 50 MB to download, but I found applying the service pack must have required much more memory. So simply click install and then be prepared to wait. I found that I had to go back a couple times and click the check for updates link after rebooting each time.

Eventually however, this service pack 1 option did show up.

After downloading the service pack, there was a long wait while it installed. For me I would estimate it took about an hour to install if not more. Even though the install said it was only 50 MB, I have read it the actual service pack is over 1 GB in size. So after you start applying it, I believe in the background it downloads and installs the rest of that 1 GB package. So be prepared to wait.

On first reboot, you will probably notice a little text in the lower right hand corner of your screen:

To get rid of that, do the following:

http://dailyapps.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/remove-watermark.zip

* Download this Zip file (RemoveWatermark.zip). Extract it in any convenient location.
* Install watermark_fix.reg file
* Take ownership of user32.dll.mui file in C:\Windows\System32\en-US\
* Rename file to user32.dll.mui.bak
* copy downloaded user32.dll.mui to folder
* Reboot

After installing, a few tests revealed the following:

• My program seemed to run zippier.
• I found that my experience rating went from 3.0 down to 2.4 (darn!) I believe that is due to be graphics driver. It was not originally detected.
• On my dual core, it seems as though the processor usage has decreased on both cores. That is good news because normally I see it leveling around 80 to 90% while doing things like browsing in Firefox, or using speech to text or simply blogging.

Give Feedback

There is also a new desktop icon you can click to submit feedback to Microsoft. If you are having problems, click the link and submit.

As of this writing, I have only had it installed for about 15 to 20 minutes, so there is still a lot more to explore and see.

I am sure there are some brave souls out there who want to load it, so if you do, be sure and post your results here!