I've just installed Geoserver 2.3-RC1 on windows 7 64bit and JRE 6.43 and downloaded the relevant sql extensions and Microsoft files . As instructed , I've copied "gt-jdbc-sqlserver-9.0-RC1.jar" to "C:\Program Files (x86)\GeoServer 2.3-RC1\lib" and also the x86 versions of "sqljdbc_auth.dll" and "sqljdbc_xa.dll" to "C:\Windows\System32".
I've restarted geoserver and went to Add Store and still didn't see SQL option.
I've tried doing the same with the x64 versions of the dlls , same result.
What am I missing ?!