Release candidates for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 are officially available.

A candidate for the release of the first service pack for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is officially available for download .

Microsoft has long and often reiterated that the first service pack for Windows 7 will not bring significant innovations, but will only be a cumulative update with support for some new system functions.

The most significant innovations in the service pack for Windows 7:

• Additional options for linking with external services. In Windows 7 , additional support will be added for interfacing with third-party services that support the WS-Federation protocol in order to improve both platform compatibility and authentication capabilities between organizations;
• Improved work with devices HDMI-audio. A small proportion of users of Windows 7 encountered problems when connecting a computer to an HDML audio device. The connection to the device could be terminated after a system reboot This problem will be fixed in the fix pack;
• Fixed problem when printing mixed pages in XPS documents . In Windows 7, when printing XPS documents from the XPS Viewer tool, there is a problem with the portrait and landscape mode pages. Printing is done in one mode only. This issue is resolved in SP1.

Changes related to Windows Server 2008 R2:
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• Dynamic Memory technology;
• Microsoft RemoteFX technology;
• Additional scalability and high availability with DirectAccess
• support for Managed Service Accounts (MSAs) on the extranet;
• support for managing increased authentication traffic to domain controllers that are connected to networks with high latency (Internet);
• Improvements in disk subsystem failover clusters.

Changes that affect both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2:

• Changed the behavior of the setting “Return previous folders after loading”. Previously, the “Revert previous folders after boot” setting returned open folders in cascade mode. After installing the first service pack, the folders will open in their original position;
• Extended support for authentication types in RRAS and IPsec. Support for new types of identifiers has been added to the IKEv2 protocol, which will allow the use of additional identification forms for authentication via IKEv2, for example, Email-ID or Certificate Subject;
• Support for advanced vector processor extensions (Advanced Vector Extensions, AVX). Windows 7 SP1 will bring support for the new AVX processor instruction set . This kit was approved in 2008 by Intel and AMD . The first processors that will support these instruction sets will appear only in 2011.

More information about these and other changes can be found in the official documentation .

Download Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 Release Candidate (KB976932) at this link .