Windows Server 2008 R2 & Windows 7 SP1 Release Candidate (RC v.721)

This morning I opened up an email from Microsoft UK entitled ‘TechNet Newsletter – 28 October -  Windows 7 SP1 RC | SQL Server 2008 R2 Migration’ – the main interest for me here is the SP1 RC, not so much the Windows 7 reference, but as Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 x64 share the same codebase this Service Pack is immediately applicable to the server O/S also.

A couple of months ago I’d posted on SP1 beta (http://blog.thefullcircle.com/2010/08/24/a-tale-of-4-betas/), and having suffered a few minor issues of running a service pack beta I was keen to upgrade.  The main issue experienced was on my test Hyper-V Server R2 build and VM’s loosing external network connectivity under high load/stress requiring the host to be restarted to resolve – not ideal for the a production domain controller, my main Windows Home Server and my Vail test box..

 

Anyway back to SP1 RC..

there are 3 methods of install… ISO image/DVD, architecture specific executable, and via windows update (with a modification/additional code)

If you have the SP1 beta installed you must first uninstall it before attempting SP1 RC install, I’d recommend wusa.exe /uninstall /kb:976932 as this covers both Server Core / Hyper-V Server and full installations.

 

Windows 7 x86 upgrade via Windows Update

Win7-SP1RC-windows-update

 

 

links and resources re-posted:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/uktechnet/archive/2010/10/27/download-windows-7-and-windows-server-2008-r2-sp1-rc.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/evalcenter/ff183870.aspx

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itproSP/threads