The release candidates of the first service packs for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 leaked to the net earlier this week. This indicated the next major step in the development phase, and it was likely that Microsoft would offer the release candidates to the public at a later time as well.
Today now, the release candidates for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are officially available for download. Microsoft aims at IT professionals, developers and tech enthusiasts who want to test the operating system update in their organization or for compatibility with their applications.
Downloads however are available to all users that have a valid Windows Live ID and a genuine Windows operating system.
Microsoft is offering three different downloads, which require a little bit of explanation:
- WUSignUpTool_x86.exe and WUSignUpTool_x64.exe enable the release candidate in Windows Update, so that it can be downloaded and installed via Microsoft’s updating service.
- windows6.1-KB976932-X86.exe and windows6.1-KB976932-X64.exe will install the release candidate to 32-bit or 64-bit editions of Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2
- 7601.17105.100929-1730_Update_Sp_Wave1-B1SP1.0_DVD.iso, a standalone iso image to update computer systems.
Documentation is available as well, detailing the changes, hotfixes and security updates in the service pack release candidates. For Windows 7 they are:
- Additional support for communication with third-party federation services – Additional support has been added to allow Windows 7 clients to effectively communicate with third-party identity federation services (those supporting the WS-Federation passive profile protocol). This change enhances platform interoperability, and improves the ability to communicate identity and authentication information between organizations.
- Improved HDMI audio device performance – A small percentage of users have reported issues in which the connection between computers running Windows 7 and HDMI audio devices can be lost after system reboots. Updates have been incorporated into SP1 to ensure that connections between Windows 7 computers and HDMI audio devices are consistently maintained.
- Corrected behavior when printing mixed-orientation XPS documents – Prior to the release of SP1, some customers have reported difficulty when printing mixed-orientation XPS documents (documents containing pages in both portrait and landscape orientation) using the XPS Viewer, resulting in all pages being printed entirely in either portrait or landscape mode. This issue has been addressed in SP1, allowing users to correctly print mixed-orientation documents using the XPS Viewer.
- Change to behavior of “Restore previous folders at logon” functionality– SP1 changes the behavior of the “Restore previous folders at logon” function available in the Folder Options Explorer dialog. Prior to SP1, previous folders would be restored in a cascaded position based on the location of the most recently active folder. That behavior changes in SP1 so that all folders are restored to their previous positions.
- Enhanced support for additional identities in RRAS and IPsec – Support for additional identification types has been added to the Identification field in the IKEv2 authentication protocol. This allows for a variety of additional forms of identification (such as E-mail ID or Certificate Subject) to be used when performing authentication using the IKEv2 protocol.
- Support for Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) – There has always been a growing need for ever more computing power and as usage models change, processors instruction set architectures evolve to support these growing demands. Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) is a 256 bit instruction set extension for processors. AVX is designed to allow for improved performance for applications that are floating point intensive. Support for AVX is a part of SP1 to allow applications to fully utilize the new instruction set and register extensions.
Windows 7 SP1 RC details:
- Service Pack 1 Release date: First half of 2011.
- Upgrade possible from SP1 RC to final: No, the RC needs to be uninstalled first.
- Available languages: English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish.
- SP1 RC expiration date: You will be reminded beginning August 30, 2011. The RC will expire on November 30, 2011
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