MOSS Advanced Search throwing "Object reference not set to an instance of an object."

I've been playing with the advanced search for a client and wanted to do something fairly straight forward. All I wanted to do is disable the language picker and result type picker. The language picker is the one allows you to search only the language(s) such as French, German etc. Both these features were not required by the client but they did need the custom scopes I had set up to be visible to allow further filtering. So what's the problem I hear you ask? Well after modifying the Advanced Search Web Part to disable the features and enable the scopes it kept on throwing the error "Object reference not set to an instance of an object."

Initially I though this could be caused by not specifying a label for the scopes but it was still throwing the error even after supplying labels. After much enabling and disabling of scopes, languages and results it did eventually display the way I wanted but it was sporadic at best. My solution of trying combinations until worked is not really a solution and how do you document this for a client?

"Um Just fiddle with with a bit until it works and then don't ever touch it".

After searching around for a resolution I hit the wall. A few posts suggest that Service Pack 1 for SharePoint is the cause of the problem. If anyone knows anything about this please let me know.