According to The Register, a batch of laptops pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Premium has been infected with a 13-year-old boot sector virus.

The consignment of infected Medion laptops – which could number anything up to 100,000 shipments – had been sold in Danish and German branches of retail giant Aldi. The computers had been loaded with Microsoft’s latest operating system Vista and Bullguard’s anti-virus software, which failed to detect and remove the malware.

Bullguard says on its website, “Stoned.Angelina is a low-risk boot virus that infects the MBR (Master Boot Record) of hard disks. This is a very old virus. Apart from its ability to spread from computer to computer, it carries no payload (damage) to the systems it infects.”

Virus Bulletin technical consultant John Hawes said, “This is a reminder that old viruses never really die. Malware that’s been off the radar for years often pops up when least expected, after someone digs out an old floppy or boots up an ancient system, and security firms have a duty to maintain protection against older threats for just this kind of eventuality.”

Storm in a teacup? Looks like it.

According to Ina Fried of News.com “The first Vista service pack may serve dual purposes for Microsoft: fixing the operating system’s rough edges while simultaneously indicating that it’s ready for mass adoption.”

Nonetheless, in announcing its plans to release Service Pack 1 early next year, Microsoft is noting that the milestone remains an important signal for some businesses that the operating system has reached a level of maturity. Many analysts have consistently advised companies to hold off on Vista deployments until the first service pack’s arrival.

Shanen Boettcher, a general manager in the Windows unit, says, “There’s always a portion of the market that has that M.O. I would expect that we will see a little bit of an increase.”

For those of us already using Windows Vista, it’s hard to see what the fuss is about.