The Windows 7 Release Candidate is Out

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/05/05/the-windows-7-release-candidate-rc-is-here.aspx' target='_blank'>http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/wi...rc-is-here.aspx</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"As we previously announced, today the Windows 7 RC is now available for anyone interested in giving it a spin! Typically, a release candidate is the last development milestone before release to manufacturing (RTM), signifying that engineering and development have made significant advancements and that the code is entering the final phases of testing. Essentially, the Windows 7 RC is the result of a lot of the great feedback we received during the Windows 7 Beta. That's why I'm so excited to use it and excited for YOU to use it!"</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1241543118.usr1.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>I'm <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx" target="_blank">downloading it right now</a> and will take it for a spin on my HP Mini 1000. I'm looking forward to spending some time with the release candidate, seeing what's changed, etc. My experience with Windows 7 has thus far been very positive. Anyone else taken the RC for a spin yet?</p>

[alanjrobertson]

Installing on my Samsung NC10 as I type! Pretty speedy installation, by far the biggest problem was trying to create a bootable flash drive - I kept having problems formatting or converting to NTFS. In the end I just installed the bootloader on a USB HDD and it worked perfectly!

[ptyork]

When you install it, please let me know if it is, in fact, build 7100. I got that off of BitTorrent (dumb since I could have gotten it through my MSDN subscription two days later) and I just want to make sure it is the "real" RC.

Anyway, I am loving it mostly. My only major gripe is the sleep/hibernate process, which I'm sure is 100% chipset dependent. I can't get it to hibernate without crashing (taking literally 3 minutes to come out of hibernation and then crashing) or even to deep (S3) sleep properly, which is probably related. Often it won't go to sleep at all after a while (until I reboot and then things clear up again). I think Vincent mentioned how good Macs were at sleep/wake and he is SO right. Even at it's best (i.e., when it actually works) it seems to take 15+ seconds to fully resume from any form of sleep (be it S1 or S3) and on my Macbook it is about as quick as I can start typing or moving the mouse. Microsoft needs to put some major work into this...

Does sleep work as advertised on your Mini?

Oh yeah, and I can't get Quicken 2009 to work, which is a blessing since I'm broke and it is just depressing. ;)

[Darius Wey]

When you install it, please let me know if it is, in fact, build 7100. I got that off of BitTorrent (dumb since I could have gotten it through my MSDN subscription two days later) and I just want to make sure it is the "real" RC.

Build 7100 is the RC. If you're unsure of whether your copy is the real deal, download it again from MSDN or the Windows 7 web site, or verify your copy's SHA-1 digest against the one published on MSDN.

Does sleep work as advertised on your Mini?

Sleep works pretty well on my Inspiron Mini 9. I've yet to encounter any of the delays you've reported; it's near instant-on and instant-off.

[Darius Wey]

Installing on my Samsung NC10 as I type! Pretty speedy installation, by far the biggest problem was trying to create a bootable flash drive - I kept having problems formatting or converting to NTFS. In the end I just installed the bootloader on a USB HDD and it worked perfectly!

If anyone's interested, here are instructions for slapping that ISO down on to a USB flash drive for installation:


Ensure the USB flash drive is connected to the computer.
Click Start > Run, and type in cmd.exe, or simply launch Command Prompt from within the Start menu.
Type diskpart and hit Enter.
In the diskpart window, type list disk and hit Enter, and note the disk number of the USB flash drive.
Next, type select disk X and hit Enter, where X corresponds to the disk number you just noted.
Type clean and hit Enter.
Type create partition primary and hit Enter.
Type select partition 1 and hit Enter.
Type active and hit Enter.
Next, type format fs=ntfs or format fs=fat32 and hit Enter. You can append quick to the command for a quick format.
Once formatted, the flash drive should be assigned a drive letter. If not, you can manually assign one by typing assign and hitting Enter.
Type exit and hit Enter to return to the Command Prompt window.
Open My Computer and note the drive letter of the flash drive.
Then, in the Command Prompt window, type xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\ and hit Enter, where d: corresponds to the source drive (i.e., that of the ISO), and e: corresponds to the target drive (i.e., that of the flash drive).
xcopy will do its thing; once completed, remove the flash drive, connect it to your netbook, and configure the start-up options to boot from the flash drive. Happy installing!

[Vincent Ferrari]

Installed it in Parallels and the obvious thing I've noticed is that it's much better as far as performance goes than Vista was on the same virtual machine. Overall it runs pretty good. Gonna delve more deeply into it tonight but so far I like it. I'm not surprised by that, though, because I liked Vista, also.

[alanjrobertson]

It's running really smoothly on my Samsung NC10. Automatically installed drivers for everything, the only minor snag I hit was the brightness & wireless LAN on/off hotkeys not working & the trackpad not supporting scrolling - installing the Samsung Displaymate software and Synaptics Touchpad driver for Vista solved both of those issues with minimal extra bloatware!

Overall really very impressed!

Alan