Microsoft published new release notes about the release candidate of Service Pack 1 for Vista. They are mostly about bugs and workarounds. The PCwizKid blog claims to have information that SP1 will be released on Feb. 4.

On the one hand that would make sense, because it is my birthday. I mean after all the free promotion for Vista on this blog that would just be a suitable birthday present. Don’t you think so? On the other hand, it is not very probable that Microsoft publishes release notes for a release candidate just a few days before the real thing is about to be pushed out. So I am afraid that the MS guys will just forget my birthday again.

Noteworthy about these release notes is the fact that SP1 will uninstall GPMC (Group Policy Management Console). That is already known for some time, but I expected that the new version would be available for download as soon as SP1 comes out. It seems you can’t count on that. If you want to configure Vista specific Group Policies or if you work with ADMX templates you need the Vista version of GPMC. So keep that in mind if SP1 really shows up on Monday.

It is still a complete mystery to me why this SP uninstalls GPMC without installing the new version. It is such an important tool for every system administrator. I found it quite useful that it is always available on every Vista machine I logon. My guess is that it will be a part of RSAT for Vista. Though that still doesn’t explain why RSAT isn’t also included in SP1. I suppose with such a move, Microsoft would have made some friends among Windows admins.

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