Windows 7 SP1 Is Cooking, External Testing Build Coming

[Crispy]

Microsoft is gearing up for an important stage in the testing of its first major update to the latest iteration of the Windows client. The Redmond company traditionally releases the first Service Pack for a new Windows OS approximately one year after the platform was finalized, and is currently cooking SP1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. A third-party report indicates that the software giant has started preparing Windows 7 copies for the delivery of the first external testing development milestone of Windows 7 SP1.

According to WithinWindows, Microsoft is following the same strategy for Windows 7 as for previous Beta service pack rollouts outside of Redmond. In this regard, the company began enabling a check within Windows 7 operating systems, which would qualify the respective versions as candidates for testing the SP1 Beta. The process involves refreshes served through Windows Update in order to add a registry key as well as an associated value which will permit members in the Windows 7 SP1 Beta testing pool to download the new bits.

Here is the Key added to Windows 7 RTM machines: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Win7SP1 and this is the value coming with it SPORTM (REG_SZ). At the time of this article, Microsoft had yet to either confirm or deny the fact that external tester had been approached for Windows 7 SP1 Beta testing.

Don’t be deceived by the fact that Windows 7 was released on October 22nd, 2009, when attempting to calculate when SP1 will be delivered for the operating system. Fact is that Microsoft finalized Windows 7 at the end of July. It was on July 22nd that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 were released to manufacturing, plenty of time for the software giant to start working on the first service pack for the latest versions of the Windows client and server platforms.

Service Pack 1 will also update Windows Server 2008 R2

 

[davehc]

There is no denying that, if you want the latest news/rumours, that Rafael Rivera is definitely ahead of the pack. However, in this case either deliberately or though a misunderstanding I think he may have got hold of the wrong info. The link shown is, I believe, from Windows 7 Build 7227 (with SP1). I do notice that he has omitted the date column. It was discussed on the TEchnet forum, and it was described as only a misrepresented leak of the result of Microsoft testing serviceability for the next upgrade of that Windows 7 beta. Those running the retail release are , in essence, already using that SP. (imo)