Dec 18, 2010 11:49 GMT  ·  By

A new development milestone of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is now available for download, but not for the client or server flavors of the platform, but for the embedded and componentized variant of the OS. Microsoft has released a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the upcoming upgrade to Windows Embedded Standard 7.

Customers interested in getting a taste of Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Windows Embedded Standard 7 can now download the CTP release and start testing it.

According to the software giant, Windows Embedded Standard 7 SP1 CTP is available to early adopters for testing via Microsoft Connect.

Customers need to think of Windows Embedded Standard 7 SP1 as the equivalent of Windows 7 SP1, at least this is the perspective of the Redmond company.

“What is Windows Embedded Standard 7 Service Pack 1? Service Pack 1 delivers the Windows 7 SP1 updates to Windows Embedded Standard 7.

“This includes the new RemoteFX technology for client, and the new embedded specific SKU Compliance Packages.

“On December 16th, 2010 the CTP for Windows Embedded Service Pack 1 is available to our customers and partners,” Microsoft noted in an email sent to participants in the CTP testing program.

The software giant is now putting the finishing touches on SP1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

At the end of October 2010, Microsoft offered early adopters Windows 7 SP1 Release Candidate (RC) Build 7601.17105.

The company also noted that it was targeting the first quarter of 2011 for the launch of Windows 7 SP1.

Rumours have indicated that the company might release Windows 7 SP1 to manufacturing earlier than that, perhaps even around the start of 2011, with the final bits set for delivery in March.

Microsoft has yet to offer any confirmation of deadlines for the next development milestones for Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Embedded Standard 7 SP1.

“SP1 is available as a cab file or toolkit IBW runtime file. The cab update files allow for the SP1 update to be applied online to an existing Windows Embedded Standard 7 image using the following command line with administrator privileges,” Microsoft stated.

“Toolkit and IBW runtimes: This supplies a refreshed toolkit and SP1-based distribution shares for the creation of images based on SP1 functionality. This can update an existing installation of Windows Embedded Standard or be installed as a fresh installation of the toolkit.”

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Release Candidate (RC) Build 7601.17105.100929-1730 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Release Candidate (RC) Build 7601.17105.100929-1730 are available for download here.