Vista Service Pack Patched

June 26, 2008 – 11:12 AM

Microsoft has released a reliability update for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) that fixes several bugs in the OS update, including one that threw off errors when users tried to run large applications, such as Microsoft’s own Excel 2007 and Windows Media Player.

The update, which Microsoft posted Tuesday to its download servers, will be pushed to users automatically next month via Windows Update, a company engineer said on a support forum yesterday.

Although Microsoft regularly issues reliability updates separate from its normal monthly security fixes, this is the first time it has released one specifically for Windows Vista SP1. Microsoft released Vista SP1 to the general public in late March.

Among the fixes included with the update is one that Microsoft characterized as an issue “in which large applications cannot run after the computer is turned on for extended periods of time,” according to an accompanying description of the update’s contents. “For example, when you try to start Excel 2007 after the computer is turned on for extended periods of time, a user may receive an error message that resembles the following: EXCEL.EXE is not a valid Win32 application.”

Users reported the problem on a Vista support forum as early as April 1, claiming that they saw the error message when trying to run Office 2007 applications, including Excel and Access, as well as when launching Vista’s built-in screen capture tool and Windows Media Player.

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