Microsoft officials on Wednesday denied reports that the company has released a trial version of a major software update for its new Windows Vista operating system.

A company spokeswoman told InformationWeek that news stories and blog reports indicating that Microsoft has already sent to developers a beta version of SP1 for Windows Vista -- and is on the verge of shipping a final version -- are "inaccurate."

On Tuesday, the Web site Winbeta.org posted an e-mail from Microsoft's Windows Driver Kit team that stated that the company had released a beta version of Vista SP1.

"A new beta WDK build is now available for download on [Microsoft's] Connect [Web site]," the e-mail said. "This WDK beta release to Connect coincides with the recent OS beta release for Vista SP1 Preview," it continued.

Following the post, several online news organizations picked up the story.

Microsoft's spokeswoman, however, said the e-mail was not accurate. The spokeswoman would say only that the company plans to release a beta version of Windows Vista SP1 "sometime this year" but has yet to do so.

Indeed, in a follow up e-mail to Winbeta.org, Microsoft's WDK team said the confusion was due to a "typo." In the second e-mail, the WDK team said they originally meant to state that a driver kit was available for the forthcoming Windows Server 2008.

Microsoft typically issues major updates and fixes to an operating system in the form of service packs. The first service pack for Windows XP shipped in October of 2002, about 10 months after the product's release.

Earlier this year, however, Microsoft officials said they did not expect Windows Vista SP1 to be a "big bang" service pack because the company now has the technology to automatically push out smaller updates to users through the course of the year.