It addresses a lot of small bugs, said group product manager Jay Roxe.

But if you’re a developer, you might not consider the fixes so minor if your IDE hangs because of a weird combination of circumstances.

Examples of fixes in the service pack included the tendency for Visual Studio to hang when you work with nested generic types or large programs in Visual C#. Other fixes addressed performance issues such as slow startups when you debug native applications, use large VB (Visual Basic) programs, or start the Visual C++ debugger.

Additionally, Service Pack 1 fixes compiler error messages associated with VB 2005 projects and the corruption of deployment files for Web and Setup projects.

Although Microsoft has made this commitment before, Roxe took pains to reiterate that apps developed with the .NET Framework versions 1.1 and 2.0 would work in Windows Vista when it comes out.

He added that shortly after Vista enters general release, that Microsoft would refresh Service Pack 1 to deal with Visual Studio 2005 compatibility issues with the new OS. In Microsoft parlance, the refresh would not be akin to a full service pack.