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Microsoft makes Windows 7 RC available, but can't handle the rush

By | April 30, 2009, 7:45am PDT

Summary: See my follow-up post: Database glitch caused Windows 7 RC server meltdown. Early this morning, at around 6AM Pacific time, the public—or at least that subset of the public willing to pay for an annual MSDN or TechNet subscription—was finally allowed to download the Windows 7 Release Candidate in a Microsoft-approved ISO image from a Microsoft-run server. (Availability [...]

See my follow-up post: Database glitch caused Windows 7 RC server meltdown.

Early this morning, at around 6AM Pacific time, the public—or at least that subset of the public willing to pay for an annual MSDN or TechNet subscription—was finally allowed to download the Windows 7 Release Candidate in a Microsoft-approved ISO image from a Microsoft-run server. (Availability for the general public is scheduled for May 5.)

The official downloads are available to technical beta testers and Microsoft MVPs via the Connect servers. MSDN and TechNet subscribers have to log in with their subscriber IDs to gain access to the download directories. Software available for download includes Release Candidate versions of Windows 7 (x86 and x64) and Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64 only), with language packs available for German, Spanish, Japanese, and French. An Arabic edition is available for technical beta testers but not for MSDN/TechNet users. All download locations are also offering the beta releases of Windows Virtual PC with XP Mode in x86 and x64 versions, along with debugging tools and symbols for all releases.

Alert subscribers who accessed the site within the first few minutes after the files were made available report that downloads are fast and smooth. Unfortunately, within 20 minutes Microsoft’s servers appeared overloaded, and trying to access the download pages for the next three-plus hours resulted in an error message.

Clicking direct links to the download files resulted in this error message: “We’re sorry! The page you were expecting to see has been removed or is unavailable.” The Downloads panel on TechNet and MSDN subscriber pages likewise was inaccessible, reporting: “An Error Has Occurred There was an unexpected error while attempting to retrieve your profile data.”

The download glitch is a repeat of the Beta experience in January, when Microsoft’s servers were similarly swamped.

Update 9:30AM PDT: The MSDN Subscriptions Blog acknowledges glitch, says they’re working on it:

Thanks to all the tremendous demand for Window 7 RC, the systems are having trouble keeping up…

… but we are actively working on some changes to improve the site availability.
If you have been able to grab the bits, you can come back later for a key (you have 30 days). If you claimed a beta key and wrote it down or exported it, it is the SAME key. You have 10 activations (on a single machine) for the Windows 7 beta/rc key.

Update 2 10AM PDT: Both TechNet and MSDN are back online now.

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Topics

Microsoft Developer Network, Microsoft Windows 7, Intel X86, Release Candidate, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft TechNet, Download Glitch, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Servers, Processors, Software, Hardware, Semiconductors, Components, Ed Bott

Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications.

Disclosure

Ed Bott

Ed Bott is a freelance technical journalist and book author. All work that Ed does is on a contractual basis.

Since 1994, Ed has written more than 25 books about Microsoft Windows and Office. Along with various co-authors, Ed is completely responsible for the content of the books he writes. As a key part of his contractual relationship with publishers, he gives them permission to print and distribute the content he writes and to pay him a royalty based on the actual sales of those books. Ed's books written prior to fall 2011 have been distributed by Que Publishing (a division of Pearson Education) and by Microsoft Press. As of November 2011, Ed is a partner in the independent publishing company Fair Trade Digital Exchange, which exclusively publishes his books.

On occasion, Ed accepts consulting assignments. In recent years, he has worked as an expert witness in cases where his experience and knowledge of Microsoft and Microsoft Windows have been useful. In each such case, his compensation is on an hourly basis, and he is hired as a witness, not an advocate.

Ed does not own stock or have any other financial interest in Microsoft or any other software company. He owns 500 shares of stock in EMC Corporation, which was purchased before the company's acquisition of VMware. In addition, he owns 350 shares of stock in Intel Corporation, purchased more than two years ago. All stocks are held in retirement accounts for long-term growth.

Ed does not accept gifts from companies he covers. All hardware products he writes about are purchased with his own funds or are review units covered under formal loan agreements and are returned after the review is complete.

Biography

Ed Bott

Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications. He's served as editor of the U.S. edition of PC Computing and managing editor of PC World; both publications had monthly paid circulation in excess of 1 million during his tenure. He is the author of more than 25 books on Microsoft Windows and Office, including the recently released Windows 7 Inside Out.

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Wait a minute Ed...
Badgered 1st May 2009
You delete my simple joke about honeymonster knowing the same people as Mike Cox, yet you let this post stay? Seriously?
View in thread
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How long
Cylon Centurion 30th Apr 2009
Will the RC be up for download? I certainly hope they're not going to put a limit on this as well, like they did with the beta...
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Probably until RTM
mikefarinha 30th Apr 2009
My guess would be that Win7 RC will be available for download until RTM comes out. As of yesterday you can still download Win7 Beta from MSDN.
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RE: How long
Narg Updated - 30th Apr 2009
I'd expect it to be there until release. Maybe even a while afterwards, but not likely. What suprised me was that the RC will allow use through June 2010. Amazing.
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Just launched my download from MSDN
honeymonster 30th Apr 2009
I'm getting in excess of 800KB/sec which
probably means that I'm limited by my own
bandwidth.

Ultimate x64 will arrive in an hour, give or
take.

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RE: Microsoft makes Windows 7 RC available, but can't handle the rush
Loverock Davidson 30th Apr 2009
This can only be seen as a good thing. There are that many people interested in Microsoft Windows 7 that if Microsoft can't handle the load you know its going to be good. Its hard to believe just how popular Windows 7 is considering its just now hitting RC1 status yet everyone wants a copy of it. This is the OS that is going to change the IT game. Well done Microsoft!
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How big is it?
LittleGuy 30th Apr 2009
MS: that's a personal question
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Contributr
Size
Ed Bott 30th Apr 2009
x86 = ~2.5GB
x64 = ~3.2GB
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Intentional under provision
johnfenjackson@... 30th Apr 2009
I wonder whether the under-provision of bandwidth is a deliberate ploy on behalf of M$, designed to create the impression of massive demand.

I mean no technology company could be that incompetent, surely?
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I Highly Doubt It
GameOvR 30th Apr 2009
You think that they did something that evil, and that meniachal to piss off the user? Highly doubt it. Just like EVERYONE else, they have limits on bandwidth too! Yes they are richer than **** but even they dont have access to every server in the universe.
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RE: under provision
Narg 30th Apr 2009
OK, how about they raise the price of Windows in order to buy more servers and bandwidth. Maybe that'd make you happy? Get a clue. This is the #1 OS in the World. There is no company on Earth that could handle the load within the first 24 hours. Period. MS is actually doing quite well, and you can download it if you have patience.

The problem is not with MS, it's with your patience.
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Anyone believeing that its not....
storm14k 30th Apr 2009
...is a fool. The first one you could give them the benefit of the doubt (though I didn't) but now you'd think they know. Its just a way to create more buzz.
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That's what I thought about the Beta
mikefarinha 30th Apr 2009
I thought the same thing when they released the beta... however they never did capitalize on the situation.
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Handling it quite well I think...
Narg Updated - 30th Apr 2009
For such an anticipated OS, you'd expect the site to be bogged down. I'm downloading it now though, but it took just a small amount of patience. It's actually transferring at a good rate too. Their site did return errors, but after a few tries, I was able to drill down to the W7 download and start it. Each link took more than 1 try to finally work, but they all did eventually work. The error mostly was "unable to process request" style errors. Very well handled if you ask me.
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Contributr
Very well handled?
Ed Bott 30th Apr 2009
You are generous. I would imagine the people running the download servers are sweating bullets right now and management is either screaming or quietly shooting looks of cold fury.
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I think it's done intentionally...
TheWerewolf 30th Apr 2009
The first time it happened with Beta 1, I could forgive them since it was a bit of an unknown quantity (although honestly, given the generally positive discussion about Win7 up to that point, someone should have said 'what if everyone tries to get a copy?').

But this time - it's looking more like they undershot intentionally so they could say 'wow - we expected a huge demand for the public one - but we didn't expect this big a reaction from the TechNet/MSDN crowd - clearly this is even a bigger hit than we hoped it would be...' happy

Still, hopefully on May 5 they'll be ready. I think the demand will be staggering.
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RE: Microsoft makes Windows 7 RC available, but can't handle the rush
shellcodes_coder 30th Apr 2009
Their servers are getting hammered
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Hmmm fine example of a blog about nothing.
Skullet 30th Apr 2009
Maybe you can explain to us Ed, how a company would go about serving a 2GB+ file to potentially tens of thousands of people simultaneously without a single hiccup, taking into account internet connections of 20mb+ are fairly common these days. How much bandwidth do you suppose would be required for a task like that?

I realise its your job to write these blogs, but pointing out the obvious while at the same time ignoring the blatantly obvious, is to put it mildly not your best work.
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Contributr
Not sure I understand
Ed Bott 30th Apr 2009
I report what happened. It didn't work for three hous, then it started working again and is running smoothly.

I'll have an update shortly.
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The point
Skullet 30th Apr 2009
The point I was trying to make, is that you aren't really telling us anything that we didn't already expect to see, especially after the same thing happened with the beta.

The member bellow you has pointed to about the only viable solution, and thats to release it via peer to peer and let the end user soak up the bandwidth hit.

Otherwise the other option is to invest a stack of money in hardware or paying for bandwidth, I'm not that clued up when it comes to distributing data on that scale, but I expect that isn't likely to be cheap. Microsoft have deep pockets but like everyone else there is a limit to what they can actually do.
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Contributr
You assume incorrectly
Ed Bott 30th Apr 2009
As it turns out, the problem was not related to bandwidth at all. It was a problem with the authentication on the MSDN and TechNet servers, where a database was falling over because of the volume of requests for subscribers to get access to the download pages. Once that was fixed, everything worked just fnie.

Rather than assuming that the problem was a lack of bandwidth, I asked and got an answer. Here it is.
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Its hardly apples and oranges though is it?
Skullet Updated - 1st May 2009
I downloaded it days ago via Bit Torrent so its not an issue that required me to investigate further.

Still falling over due to volume of requests or bandwidth seems like much the same issue - the servers simply couldn't cope with the demand placed on them. Given that people were seeing slow download speeds once they had gotten past the authentication, would suggest that bandwidth was in fact an issue also. But thanks for providing further info on the matter.
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Lots of ways, I'm sure.
LeoD 30th Apr 2009
Hmm, throttling, download queues, peer to peer... plenty of ways to solve the problem if having enough servers and bandwidth yourself isn't an option.

I imagine MS thought they had enough, though, else they would've done one of those other things. They wouldn't switch this on thinking/knowing it's not going to work. Something will have gone wrong -- s**t happens! -- or demand will have been more than expected.

It's hardly impossible to do, though, if you get the estimates right and plan accordingly.

They certainly manage to push out a lot of data through Windows Update, too.
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RE: Microsoft makes Windows 7 RC available, no issues downloading
cnfrisch 30th Apr 2009
I download RC1 64-bit at 6:10 AM PST from MS Connect and had no problems. At 8:35 AM PST I downloaded RC1 32-bit from MSDN and had no problems. I'm now running Windows 7 RC1 64-bit and its absolutely fantastic!
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It's slow
mswift@... 30th Apr 2009
The download is slow here as of 11:40 PDT. It has been going into retries.

You do know that this is hosted by Akamai?
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Filesharing sites don't suffer these gremlins.
Custard_over_2x_Pie Updated - 30th Apr 2009
So why don't MS go the same route?

Also. These sorts of incidents don't fill us with confidence with respect to scaling up Azure cloud services.

0 Votes
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Hmmm not really
Skullet 30th Apr 2009
I've used a fair amount of file sharing sites, and I've rarely used any that maxed out my bandwidth, that would suggest they also don't have infinite bandwidth.
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I lost my beta key can I get a new one for RC 1
Randalllind 30th Apr 2009
?
0 Votes
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Yes, If You Download From MSDN or TechNet - NT
John-D 30th Apr 2009
NT
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Of course...
Wolfie2K3 30th Apr 2009
The key generator for the beta is - at last report - still up and running. You just won't be able to download the RC until May 5th from the public Technet site.

If it isn't currently up and running, it will be again around May 5th - to help those who may have missed out on getting one for the Beta.
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RE: Microsoft makes Windows 7 RC available, but can't handle the rush
rd14@... 30th Apr 2009
Good mention on windows update, that surely must be using their servers to the max. Would have thought they would have apportioned more of their servers for this release tho?
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RE: Microsoft makes Windows 7 RC available, but can't handle the rush
morwen 1st May 2009
The changes they are referring to in the quote was to assign the down load to the plus subscriber and it is not available to just subscribers now as of 11 am 5/1/09!
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RE: Microsoft makes Windows 7 RC available, but can't handle the rush
wmd1@... 1st May 2009
JUST MORE MS CRAP.
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Wait a minute Ed...
Badgered 1st May 2009
You delete my simple joke about honeymonster knowing the same people as Mike Cox, yet you let this post stay? Seriously?

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