The other day I downloaded and installed Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate.

Big mistake.

What had been a very reliable, happy computer, turned into a crash-prone bug monster.  Windows Explorer didn’t start properly (no response from the start menu, system tray or task bar); when killed and restarted with Task Manager the system generally had about four or five minutes before locking up completely.  And disk usage was through the roof – it reminded me of the classic “swap of death” that plagued Windows 3…  until it seized completely, of course, with even the mouse pointer frozen to the screen.

After about my seventh or eighth reboot, without being able to actually use my computer, I decided to uninstall the service pack.  Which, without being able to get to control panel very easily, was a bit challenging.  Eventually, I restarted in safe mode and used system restore to get it back off.

This doesn’t bode well, I’m thinking.  Microsoft have already released a “release candidate refresh“, which apparently solves only installation issues. Well, ironically, I didn’t have any issues installing – I just downloaded the offline version and it sat there and did it; it’s only after it was installed that the problems started.

I don’t remember a service pack causing a problem before XP service pack 2, which completely destroyed the installation on my fiancee’s computer, necessitating a nice clean re-install.  I’m hoping that SP 1 doesn’t do the same for Vista.  But I’m by no means convinced that it won’t.

Oh, and before you ask, I have now gone back to non-SP1 Vista.  And everything is running along very nicely again, thank you very for asking.