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PC Pro reader Douglas Tresias emailed us this morning, claiming the Service Pack had rendered his PC inoperable. "Started installing at 7.15am this morning on a HP with Vista Home Basic less than six months old," he wrote. "SP1 failed to install. Machine started to reset back to previous state. Computer still not usable three hours later."

The Official Windows Vista blog also contains several tales of woe among the many congratulating Microsoft for a fine job.

"I have installed Vista SP1 today, now I have no sound and my DVD drive doesn't work," reports one user.

"I installed Vista SP1 after seeing it on Windows

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Update last night. In retrospect, not my finest decision," writes another unhappy customer. "What a disaster! It exiled all of my Nvidia drivers to the Bermuda Triangle... they're simply all gone. OK, no big deal, go to the Nvidia site, download the latest drivers, install and nada. Zip, zilch, nothing changes... the install fails... every time."

Others claim that SP1 - which is meant to improve system performance - is actually having the reverse effect. "Isn't a Service Pack suppose to fix issues?" another user comments on the Windows blog. "[I] went from using 650MB of RAM idle to 1 gig... I'll be be switching back."

Microsoft was unable to comment on any potential problems with SP1 at the time of writing.

Blocked off

The Windows blog also carries several complaints from users who have been blocked from downloading the Service Pack because of known driver issues. Microsoft said last month that "As updates for these drivers become available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update, which will unblock these systems from getting Service Pack 1.

"The result is that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but only when we are confident they will have a good experience."

Click here to read PC Pro's verdict on Vista Service Pack 1