Microsoft advances SP1 for Windows 7 due to bugs

Microsoft has reportedly abandoned its commitment to work on Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 for 22 months. The operating system is said to contain some serious bugs that affect performance, which the company wants to fix.

Even before the release of Windows 7, rumors surfaced about the release of the first Service Pack for the operating system, which would take place in the summer of 2010. That would be relatively quick: the rtm version of the first Service Pack for Vista appeared thirteen months after the release of that Windows version. Recently, however, it has been quiet around Windows 7 SP1, while the first betas are rumored to have seen the light of day by now.

According to TechARP, Microsoft had no plans to release SP1 any time soon: in fact, 22 months of development time had been set aside for the package. However, the site has found that Microsoft has backtracked on its pursuit due to the discovery of some serious bugs. The bugs would negatively affect the performance of the operating system under certain circumstances. Microsoft would have already fixed some of them; other patches are still being worked on.

A mid-2010 release wouldn’t be realistic, but an appearance of SP1 in the last quarter is reportedly a possibility. The release date is especially closely monitored by companies: they often only switch to a new Windows version after the first Service Pack has ironed out the most important imperfections.