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Yesterday I downloaded Vista SP1 RTM from the TechNet Plus -subscription downloads.

Installing Vista Service Pack 1 on a Dell -laptop

First I installed it on my work laptop (Dell Latitude 830) and it went alright without problems. On the surface it is hard to see many big changes after installation, but haven’t explored much, anyway. At least waking up from the sleep seems faster and more reliable than it was before SP1. It is almost as fast as waking on our home laptop, MacBook Pro.

Anyway, no problems at all with the work laptop and all the apps (Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2005, Office applications etc) have worked just fine so far.

Installing Vista Service Pack on the home desktop

Today I wanted to install the SP1 on my home desktop and run into one problem because of a MUI language pack. I got this error, that said:

"Windows Vista Service Pack 1 cannot be installed on your computer because the language of Windows Vista you have installed is not supported or you have installed a language pack that is not supported. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 can only be installed on computers running the English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish versions of Windows Vista or computers running only those language packs."

I have Windows Vista Business at work and Ultimate at home. I don’t remember installing any language packs, but it could be that I have chosen some Finnish language pack from some Ultimate Extras -update. I always use English version, anyway, so not sure why I have done it.

Anyway, this was easy to fix and here are the instructions to those of you who run into the same problem. This will most likely affect many international users that have multiple languages. Other option is to wait until the SP1 support comes to your language pack of choice, but it could mean several months of more waiting.

First, go to the Control Panel / Regional and Language Options and check that you have some additonal language installed. I had "suomi" which means "Finnish":

Then select the Install/uninstall languages … -button and you should see this dialog:

Select the language(s) you want to uninstall and Next and the uninstall begins:

After the process is finished, you are required to reboot. Windows configures itself for a while and then you can restart the Vista SP1 installer:

The problem is gone, woo-hoo!

Remember to read every word carefully

At this stage I could use the computer while the first progress bar went to the end. I spent the time writing this post After that you have to use another computer or do something unrelated to computers *gasp*

After three stages of waiting and logging in you should be greeted with this message: