Windows 7 is up to Build 7201, on the way to RTM. Microsoft has already confirmed officially that it will release Windows 7 to manufacturing in mid-July 2009, and that the gold versions of the operating system will be made available to customers on October 22, 2009. However the Redmond company has steered clear of discussing in any way the progress of Windows 7 in terms of interim builds since it offered Release Candidate Build 7100 for public download on May 5th. Certainly, mum's the word on Windows 7 Build 7200 and above. Despite this, Windows 7 is advancing toward RTM and Build 7201 comes to prove just that.

I asked Microsoft to comment on previous reports of Windows 7 Build 7200 with Service Pack 1, but I got a “no comment” reply from the company on the matter. The software giant wouldn't even confirm or deny that the screenshots already available in the wild are real or fake. However, with the new leaked information on Windows 7 Build 7201 it appears that previous reports were indeed real.

The last interim build of Windows 7 that made it into the wild was Build 7138. Reports indicate that Windows 7 evolved up until Build 7141 and then the versioning jumped all the way to 7200. At the same time, Microsoft has already moved past the 7200 milestone, taking development of Windows 7 as high as Build 7227. Of course there's no official confirmation of these details from the Redmond company.

The full build string of Windows 7 Build 7201 is 6.1.7201.0.winmain_win7ids.090601-1516, which indicates that the release was compiled on June 1st, 2009. According to Wzor, the 32-bit flavor of Windows 7 Build 7201 comes with the following information: MD5: 70E48837DD513BA98FE483AFD0746E37; SHA1: F2BC6FC5861C76C401DF6DA7137962C727ED938D; and CRC: 102CCA5A. The 64-bit variant of Windows 7 Build 7201 is accompanied by MD5: A64636ED74E50E7E882CDB5B80A8FCFA; SHA1: 92AC49897DE56F62BF0EF5C138974179EDE74C50; and CRC: 0AFDFA70.