A new testing build of the first service pack for Windows Vista has been made available by Microsoft, as the Redmond company is gearing up for the first fully-fledged beta of the operating system. No less than two months have passed since the first testing build of Vista SP1 was dropped in the laps of an exclusive pool of testers in mid July. Towards the end of August, a second pre-beta version of Vista SP1 was shipped to a limited group of testers, and at the end of the past month, Microsoft even managed to break the dead silence on the service pack imposed via Sinofsky's Windows Omerta (Steven Sinofsky is the Senior Vice President, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group).

At this point in time, there is still no official word from Microsoft in relation to the new release of Vista SP1. In this context, build 6.0.6001.16655 has neither been confirmed as the official Beta of Vista SP1, nor as another pre-beta version. The full tag of the new build is 6.0.6001.16655 (longhorn_rc0.070907-1905). This marks the evolution from the previous pre-beta builds. In July, Microsoft served Vista SP1 pre-beta build 6001.16549, an ISO file weighing in at 3.07GB, containing both the operating system and the service pack.

The August release of Vista SP1 was also a pre-beta, this time build 6.0.6001.16633 (longhorn.070803-1655). This version was a standalone .EXE installer designed to be integrated into an existent Vista installation. The windows6.0-kb936330-x86.exe was just 684MB in comparison with the former 3.07GB, but still just a pre-beta. Microsoft delivered both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the two pre-beta builds of Vista SP1, and the releases were subsequently leaked to peer-to-peer file sharing networks. The Redmond company failed to react in any manner to the torrents of Vista SP1 pre-beta.

According to Pinnula, Windows Vista SP1 Beta Build 6.0.6001.16655 (longhorn_rc0.070907-1905) is also available only to a limited number of testers. Still, the fact that the build shares files with the first Release Candidate of Windows Server 2008 seems to indicate that Build 6.0.6001.16655 could in fact be the first beta of Vista SP1. Windows Server 2008 RC0 was confirmed by Microsoft for this week, and Vista SP1 Beta is closely connected to the server operating system as they share the same code. At the end of August, the Redmond company promised Vista SP1 Beta would be out in September.