Microsoft today released the Release Candidate build of Service Pack 2 (6002.16670.090130) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 to the public. You can grab the standalone installer package from the Microsoft Download Center for 32-bit five languages and 32-bit all languages, 64-bit five languages and 64-bit all languages, as well as Itanium five languages and Itanium all languages. If you have Vista in English, French, German, Japanese, or Spanish, download the five languages package, otherwise get the larger "all language" version. There is also a five language and an all language .iso image available, as well as a patch that will allow you to get it via Windows Update. While this is a public release, it is still a Release Candidate, and Microsoft is recommending that the average customer "wait until the final release prior to installing this service pack" and reminding testers that "a Service Pack is not a feature release—we are not looking for new feature suggestions, only SP2 regressions, crashes, and confirmation of fixes we've made will be considered for this milestone."
The public release follows the release of the build to Microsoft Connect testers two weeks ago. The full list of the 691 hotfixes included in the service pack was made available then, and Microsoft detailed the various improvements the service pack contains. That information later appeared on the official Windows Blog, so if you're interested in the exact breakdown of application compatibility improvements, hardware ecosystem support and enhancements, operating system experience updates, enterprise improvements, as well as setup and deployment improvements, head over there for the official details.
As with previous service packs, SP2 will include all previous updates and patches for the operating system (for example, SP2 marks the inclusion of Hyper-V into Windows Server 2008 natively) as well as significant performance improvements (on top of those in SP1).
It's also worth noting that there are known issues with this build:
* Application compatibility:
o The operating system security settings will incorrectly show some versions of certain antivirus applications as inactive when they are not. Two applications known to be affected are all versions of Avira AntiVir prior to and including 8.2.0.611 and all versions of Trend Micro Internet Security prior to version 17. There is no workaround at this time for those application versions. More recent versions of these applications are not affected.
o Security Innovation Holodeck 2.8.0 (enterprise edition) may unexpectedly quit. There is no workaround at this time.
* Internet Information Services: If a Web application or service attempts to access Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) remotely using an Internet Information Services 7.0 process that runs under the application pool identity, the access will fail. To avoid this, run the process under a different identity, such as Network Service.
* SQL Server 2008: This issue affects Windows Server 2008 Standard, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, and Windows Server 2008 Datacenter. If you attempt to install SQL Server 2008 on a failover cluster, the installation will fail. If you are affected by this, have a look at the details and workaround.
SP2's main requirement that SP1 is already installed. Some have said that this is because SP2 is not yet finalized, but it has been confirmed that the final version of SP2 will still have SP1 as a prerequisite. The reason for this is size. Microsoft wants the size of SP2 to be smaller Server 2008 shipped with SP1 already installed, including the contents of the SP1 client code, which would make the Server deployments even bigger. SP2 applies to both the client and server versions of Windows because Microsoft adopted a single serviceability model to minimize deployment. Also, by releasing one single service pack, Microsoft has less testing to do, since Vista and Server 2008 have the same binaries for all common files, making for a quicker release.
Source: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/03/sp2-rc-for-vista-and-server-2008-goes-public.ars
The public release follows the release of the build to Microsoft Connect testers two weeks ago. The full list of the 691 hotfixes included in the service pack was made available then, and Microsoft detailed the various improvements the service pack contains. That information later appeared on the official Windows Blog, so if you're interested in the exact breakdown of application compatibility improvements, hardware ecosystem support and enhancements, operating system experience updates, enterprise improvements, as well as setup and deployment improvements, head over there for the official details.
As with previous service packs, SP2 will include all previous updates and patches for the operating system (for example, SP2 marks the inclusion of Hyper-V into Windows Server 2008 natively) as well as significant performance improvements (on top of those in SP1).
It's also worth noting that there are known issues with this build:
* Application compatibility:
o The operating system security settings will incorrectly show some versions of certain antivirus applications as inactive when they are not. Two applications known to be affected are all versions of Avira AntiVir prior to and including 8.2.0.611 and all versions of Trend Micro Internet Security prior to version 17. There is no workaround at this time for those application versions. More recent versions of these applications are not affected.
o Security Innovation Holodeck 2.8.0 (enterprise edition) may unexpectedly quit. There is no workaround at this time.
* Internet Information Services: If a Web application or service attempts to access Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) remotely using an Internet Information Services 7.0 process that runs under the application pool identity, the access will fail. To avoid this, run the process under a different identity, such as Network Service.
* SQL Server 2008: This issue affects Windows Server 2008 Standard, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, and Windows Server 2008 Datacenter. If you attempt to install SQL Server 2008 on a failover cluster, the installation will fail. If you are affected by this, have a look at the details and workaround.
SP2's main requirement that SP1 is already installed. Some have said that this is because SP2 is not yet finalized, but it has been confirmed that the final version of SP2 will still have SP1 as a prerequisite. The reason for this is size. Microsoft wants the size of SP2 to be smaller Server 2008 shipped with SP1 already installed, including the contents of the SP1 client code, which would make the Server deployments even bigger. SP2 applies to both the client and server versions of Windows because Microsoft adopted a single serviceability model to minimize deployment. Also, by releasing one single service pack, Microsoft has less testing to do, since Vista and Server 2008 have the same binaries for all common files, making for a quicker release.
Source: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/03/sp2-rc-for-vista-and-server-2008-goes-public.ars
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