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.

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) in English, German, Spanish, Japanese, French, and Arabic. In addition, a beta release of Windows Virtual PC with XP Mode is available in x86 and x64 versions, as are 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 now results 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 wasinaccessible, 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.