The much anticipated Windows Vista Service Pack 1 from Microsoft has yet to see the light of day, officially that is. Nevertheless, under the darkness of night, the operating system maker has silently released bits and pieces of SP1 to the public on Tuesday.

Not yet available to Windows Update users, and in two separate downloads, the release includes “Performance” and “Compatibility” updates. Both can now be downloaded and installed separately. Directly from Microsoft, the Performance update can be found here and the Compatibility update here.

The first patch labeled “Performance and Reliability” update promises to fix issues reported by Windows Vista users, including issues such as:

-You experience a long delay when you try to exit the Photos screen saver.

-A memory leak occurs when you use the Windows Energy screen saver.

-When you copy or move a large file, the “estimated time remaining” takes a long time to be calculated and displayed.

-After you resume the computer from hibernation, it takes a long time to display the logon screen.

While the second patch labled “Compatibility and Reliability” update allows for better reliability and hardware compatibility, it includes fixes to issues such as:

-The computer stops responding, and you receive a “Display driver stopped responding and has recovered” error message. You can restart the computer only by pressing the computer’s power button.

-The computer stops responding or restarts unexpectedly when you play video games or perform desktop operations.

Last week, a leaked beta version of the two Windows Vista SP1 patches surfaced on many download websites. Though slow to react, the leak has conceivably prompted Microsoft to make it available to the public this week.