Microsoft was yet to announce the releasing to manufacturing of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 that the bits had already been leaked to torrent trackers. On April 28, the Redmond company indicated that Vista SP2 (a package that also contains Windows Server 2008 SP2) had RTM'd. But signing off the Vista SP2 bits is by no means synonymous with the public availability of the service pack. Still, while Microsoft estimates that it could take as much as a few months for the public to get access to Vista SP2, end users can already download the gold version of the service pack provided they have a BitTorrent client and know where to look on peer-to-peer networks.

Both the 32-bit and the 64-bit flavors of Vista SP2 have been leaked. Installing the service pack will bump the Windows version up to 6002.18005, according to reports in the wild, full string being 6.0.6002.18005. Information accompanying the leaked bits reveals that 32- bit (x86) Vista SP2 RTM and Server 2008 SP2 RTM are available in English, Japanese, Spanish, German and French. For the x86 releases CRC: 3368C777, MD5: C9394FD32DB15619328AF4FF0315750A, and SHA1: 106C0484D7449CC4B70353C21D0C0D63E4BA66C3 certify that the downloads are indeed what they claim. As far as the x64 versions are concerned, users should look for CRC: 1737E14D, MD5: A3BCB1FFDB366397FA5FAB0898EB098D, and SHA1: BE8D74ADC029FA7350FC1F0D32BEF853C0519A92.

At the same time, Microsoft has not offered the Vista SP2 RTM bits in just five languages. The packages containing a full 36 languages have also been leaked. In this regard, 32-bit Vista SP2 RTM (36 languages) features: CRC32: 8D07A886, MD5: cad218b99fc301836e385049c75f5eaf, and SHA-1: 7f8aa802e157282d84cf47950281de53a8c26f22. The 64-bit version is accompanied by the following info: CRC32: 19C1676E, MD5: db35df98ae5a6fd085386580a6ee8b55, and SHA-1: f0e46deb7734b8ed277b0cf2304ee2babc4d9b1c.

Microsoft must have offered Vista SP2 RTM and Windows Server 2008 SP2 RTM to partners, which subsequently leaked the bits. At the time of this article MSDN and TechNet subscribers had not yet been offered Vista SP2 RTM. Public downloads of Windows Vista SP2 RTM and Windows Server 2008 SP2 RTM are expected in the second quarter of 2009.