Most visitors to this site don’t have any need for Microsoft’s Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT). (Among other things, it allows you to manage and connect to virtual machines on a Hyper-V server, as I’ve documented here in the past.)
But for those of you who need RSAT, here’s an important warning. Don’t install Windows 7 Service Pack 1 unless you’ve already installed RSAT. For some inexplicable reason, the RSAT installer package is incompatible with SP1. The RSAT tools will continue to work just fine if they’re already in place when you set up SP1. But if you try to install RSAT on a Windows 7 system that includes SP1, you’ll get an error message: “The update is not applicable to your computer.” The only solution at that point is to uninstall SP1, install RSAT, and reinstall SP1, a process that will take hours.
Microsoft says a new, SP1-compatible version of RSAT will be ready in April. And if that seems like a long time to produce an update for a problem that should have been obvious back in November, well, I agree. But that’s the official word:
The SP1 version of RSAT is planned for April. Telling me how important it is will not move things faster – we know it’s important. Don’t bother trying to override with DISM /Add-Package or PKGMGMR /IP, that will not work either; the top level package in the cab cannot be bypassed.
Let me know if this affects you.
Ed Bott 
Ed,
I ran into this problem a few months ago, but I used the workaround below:
•Expand the contents of the .msu file from the command line using the expand command.
expand -f: “amd64fre_GRMRSATX_MSU.msu” %temp%\RSAT
•After extracting the contents of the .msu file, you can install it by using Package Manager (pkgmgr.exe) from the command line using the following type syntax:
pkgmgr.exe /n:%temp%\RSAT\Windows6.1-KB958830-x64.xml
•You won’t see anything on screen but give it a couple of minutes to complete.
•After that, visit the “Turn Windows features on or Off “dialog and enable the tools you need. 🙂
I’m told there are unintended side effects with that, including an inability to take advantage of new features in SP1 for Server 2008 R2, such as dynamic memory in Hyper-V.
The quote I included in this post specifically calls out the PKGMGMR workaround.
Ed,
My usage of RSAT is limited to AD Users and Computers and Group Policy Management, so I haven’t run into any problems. I probably should have uninstalled SP1, installed RSAT and then re-installed SP1.
I wrote a better guide here:
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=150221
the XMl way didn’t work for me. Also my way updaets the tools to Sp1 level.
The service pack 1 for 64-bit windows 7 disable my access to the internet. I cannot access the internet, I uninstall service pack 1 and everything is fine. I waited several months amd insta;ll service pack again samething happen so I uninstall it again. Is is really necessary to install sevice pack 1 ?