Windows Vista, Server 2008 SP2 officially Release Candidate status, coming Q2 2009
By Ross Miller 
posted February 26th 2009 7:56AM
posted February 26th 2009 7:56AM
Well that didn't take long. Just last week, we heard about the Release Candidate (RC) builds of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 making the rounds, and now the official Windows blog has confirmed the updates should soon be available to TechNet and MSDN subscribers, with a public test to follow sometimes before its final release. And when might that be? Sometime in second quarter of this year apparently, which fits well with some rumblings we caught wind of last month.
Excellent. Vista, despite being ropy at launch, is actually pretty good now - can't remember the last time I had a problem with it. This should make it even more smooth running than it is already.
I have to 100% agree. I never had any problems with it from the start either. People exaggerate things and make things into something they're not. Kinda annoying...
thats what i've been waiting for :)
Well wait no more, its on Technet and probably MSDN already. If you're not a subscriber it should find its way onto the open net in days if not already.
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 RC and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 RC (x64) - (English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish)
is 569.56 (MB) release 2/25/2009
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 RC and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 RC (x64) - (All Languages) is 721.30 (MB) release 2/25/2009
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 RC Symbols and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 RC Symbols (x64) - (All Languages) is 226.56 (MB)
wow i was using the Vista SP2 beta waaaaay before the Win 7 beta came out ... odd its taken them this long for a RC ... oh well they must be working fulltime on Win 7
100% Vista reliability here. I must be mistaken though. My friend who has never used vista for more than 5 minutes says its unreliable.
Yeah its amazing the amount of people who have never used it but have had major problems with it.
I get some IE7 crashes and some of the Lenovo tools don't like Beta build of SP2, but its beta and I really can't complain too much. Win7 gets along fine with most of the Lenovo utilities as well. Hopefully RC or RTM SP2 of Vista gets rid of the option to safely remove my Nvidia 140M and internal PCIe Wifi card that did not exist under SP1.
I'm kind of wondering what the RC2 fixes... I mean it doesn't really have any stability issues or anything anymore so maybe it just adds some little enhancements.
(I switched to win7, and I'm kind of treating vista as a legacy OS already, so I will probably never install it, but yay Microsoft)
These are some of the changes and fixes. There is some others but I can't find them. They're enhancements rather than fixes.
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsvista/pages/notable-changes-in-sp2-rc-for-windows-vista-and-windows-server-2008.aspx
Too late MS you already screwed your MSDN Subscribers before. Should people take the chance you wont do it again?
It's probably due to a few BSOD's that have shown up out of the...blue.
for real. I didn't change a thing with my laptop's configuration and suddenly last thursday I started getting BSOD's when my Cisco VPN client would start up. I reloaded it, got all the driver updates, got SP1, had to reinstall my wireless driver due to DHCP not working on any wireless network other than the office's where I reloaded and got updates..... and after all of this I'm still seeing blue screens on occasion with my Cisco VPN client... plus now my PCMCIA-to-serial adapter won't work, and it was fine before.
For the longest time I had the one Vista laptop I knew about that never had a compatibility problem. Some recent update must interfere with my version of the VPN client, but for the longest time I was like "Why are people complaining about Vista? Throw in some extra RAM and it's great!" If anyone cares I've got an HP Compaq6710b and Vista Enterprise edition.
The other people in my office who had Vista problems before me have all moved on to Windows 7 with out problem (except one user BSOD'ed with a thumbdrive with U3 software... that stuff is annoying anyway) so I'm going to make the jump too.
just release Win7 and save us the hassle of dealing with Vista any longer
Mark and Josh above seem to know you.
We wish we didn't.
Though I am very eagerly waiting for SP2 of Vista, I am reluctant in installing the RC. I've had enough of IE8 RC1 which crashes every now and then, don't know what will happen if Vista starts behaving that way.
Got it installed
Service Pack 2 v.286
The issue with Safely Remove Hardware persists. Other than that the only noticable change is that it no long states "For Evaluation Purposes Only" "Vista Build v6001" in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.