The problem is one of the major issues with Vista is performance...

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: Will Vista SP1 and how this won’t bring any relief to those who find Vista a bit slow or sluggish? Not really, but then again service packs aren’t about performance increases; they’re about reliability and stability.

I’ve seen a lot of service packs in my time. Windows 95 and ME both got one service pack, NT 4.0 saw six, Windows 2000 had four and XP has so far seen two. But what I don’t remember regarding any of these service packs is installing it onto a system and then seeing any significant boost in performance. Service packs don’t really work that way. Sure, you’ll feel specific improvements as a result of some of the tweaks and fixes contained in the service pack, and you might feel the benefit of having your operating system refreshed by loading the service pack onto it, but a service pack should not be looked upon as a performance upgrade. If your system can’t run an OS, what it needs is upgrading or replacing, not the application of a service pack.