Early adopters that have jumped at the chance to download the first public
Beta bits of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 have undoubtedly noticed that there are no less than three downloads offered by Microsoft. In all fairness, this must be old news for those that decided to jump the gun and grab the leaked copies of Windows 7 SP1 which made their way into the wild weeks before the
official release. Users are free to download the 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) editions of the service pack, but also a 1.2GB ISO file.
It’s easy to tell that the 32-bit version of SP1 is designed for the 32-bit flavor of Windows 7 RTM. Since there’s no 32-bit successor of Windows Server 2008, Microsoft is only providing a single 64-bit variant of the service pack for both x64 Windows 7 RTM and Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM.
At the same time, the ISO might generate a little confusion. I have seen questions related to the availability of a slipstream build of Windows 7 SP1 Beta. This is not the case. “The beta will only be available as the Service Pack update itself. You will need to have a Release to Manufacturing (RTM) version of Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 to install the beta of the Service Pack,” Microsoft explained.
According to the Redmond company, the 1.2 GB “download is a unified ISO including 32 bit SP1 Update for Windows 7 and the 64 bit update for both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.” Testers will need to have Windows 7 RTM installed and then deploy SP1 Beta on top, and the same is valid for Windows Server 2008 R2. Microsoft does not provide an ISO image of Windows 7 SP1 Beta which can be used in clean install scenarios.
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Beta and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Beta are available for download here.
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