Windows 7 - SP2 RC for Vista and Server 2008 goes public

Microsoft today released the Release Candidate build of Service Pack 2 (6002.16670.090130) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 to the public. You can grab the standalone installer package from the Microsoft Download Center for 32-bit five languages and 32-bit all languages, 64-bit five languages and 64-bit all languages, as well as Itanium five languages and Itanium all languages. If you have Vista in English, French, German, Japanese, or Spanish, download the five languages package, otherwise get the larger "all language" version. There is also a five language and an all language.iso image available, as well as a patch that will allow you to get it via Windows Update. While this is a public release, it is still a Release Candidate, and Microsoft is recommending that the average customer "wait until the final release prior to installing this service pack" and reminding testers that "a Service Pack is not a feature release—we are not looking for new feature suggestions, only SP2 regressions, crashes, and confirmation of fixes we've made will be considered for this milestone."

Full Story: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/03/sp2-rc-for-vista-and-server-2008-goes-public.ars

Thanks for the news,well done.

Had this installed for alittle while now, seems to be working well, install took ages though.

And you must have sp1 installed first, was this the case in xp service packs?

^ No it was not.

Yeah i thought so, was a right pain as i downloaded sp2 and first tried using on v6000 before realizing i needed to download sp1 also.. in all honesty after using 7 i am far from impressed with this, seems very bloated.

the rc download from the ms site gives build number 16497, whilst my current rc build number is 16670.

What gives?

Same here, i didn't download from ms though, got this about a week ago.

Mine is 16670 v.286 ... downloaded it from my dashboard 2 days ago.

Still the only up side i can see over 7 is compatability.

Guess I don't know what you're saying Windows 7.

I'm beta testing this SP2 release on Vista Business which is working just fine.