Beta in April, Release in November, claims third-party source

Jan 19, 2010 08:28 GMT  ·  By

The leaked information on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Build 7600.20588 that surfaced at the end of last week confirms the first service pack for the latest iteration of the Windows client is advancing in the development process, even though Microsoft is not yet ready to breathe a single word on the progress it’s making with SP1. Reports indicate that Microsoft is gearing up to release a demo version of Windows 7 SP1 to a select pool of testers in the coming weeks. The leaked screenshots of the preview demo build of Windows 7 SP1 certainly validates claims of the Redmond company kicking off external testing of the first service pack for Windows Vista’s successor.

However, it seems that testers and partners close to Microsoft have been receiving preview build of Windows 7 SP1 since the end of 2009. Wzor noted the past year that work on Windows 7 SP1 had begun as early as September 2009. Still, at that time SP1 was only in the very early stages of development, having evolved past the Readiness Milestone in early September 2009. It was in October of the past year that Microsoft started producing preliminary releases of Windows 7 SP1, Builds 7656.0. - 7664.0.

According to MuyWindows, the current Builds of Windows 7 SP1 for the demo versions sit between 7600.20500 and 7600.20,700. In this context, there’s not exactly a match between the Build strings offered by Wzor. However, such a situation is not uncommon with Microsoft. The Redmond company is typically working on different branches for the same product in parallel, each with its own build numbers.

It appears that Microsoft sent various assemblies of pre-Escrow Beta Windows 7 SP1 to partners both in November and December 2009, while also putting together a build quality assurance monitoring development dubbed Beta Schedule Checkpoint. Wzor also claims that, as of January 2010, Microsoft has taken Windows 7 SP1 past pre-Escrow and is now focusing on the fully-fledged Escrow for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Beta. Reports note that the company will wrap up the Escrow version of Windows 7 Beta in March 2010, no later than the third week. Microsoft partners will be the first to get Windows 7 SP1 Beta Escrow releases in the first half of April 2010.

At the same time, end users are also scheduled to receive the Windows 7 SP1 Beta bits soon. The public release is reportedly planned for the second half of April. The Beta development milestone of Windows 7 will be followed by a Release Candidate (RC) and by the RTM (release to manufacturing). Third-party sources claim that Windows 7 SP1 will be released in early November 2010, approximately one year after the General Availability deadline of the operating system, with partners and testers getting the final bits in October.

Wzor indicates that Microsoft is creating new Windows 7 SP1 builds at a rapid pace, with new releases produced every two days, the vast majority of which are available exclusively internally for dogfooding. The Windows 7 SP1 Build in winmain_sp branch is 7601.16486.100115-1536 while that in the winmain branch is 7696.0.100115-1725, the Russian website informed.