Good News! Activated Win 7 RC to Win 7 RTM upgrade possible!

[GomJabbar]

I apologize if this was posted before, but if so, I did not see it.

Those of you running an activated copy of Windows 7 RC can use the Upgrade Edition of Windows 7 RTM to install Windows 7. You do not need to upgrade from XP or Vista.

If you are running the Windows 7 Release Candidate, and you have activated it, you will not need to reinstall an older version of Windows before using an Windows 7 upgrade disk.

However, you will not be able to do an upgrade installation, in which your existing programs and data are left in place. Instead, you'll have to do what Microsoft calls a custom installation. This is essentially a clean install, but your existing operating system, programs and data are squirreled away in a folder labeled WINDOWS.OLD. You end up with a fresh Windows 7 setup, but you can access that folder to get to any needed data. (Sorry, the programs in there won't work - you'll need to reinstall them.)

http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archive ... an_an.html

[Temetka]

This is kind of dumb.

Sure it saves you from having to install XP or Vista then upgrade but if I have to reload everything anyway I might as well go with the tried and true nuke and pave approach.

[GomJabbar]

I disagree. In this scenerio, you have to basically do a clean install, although your documents are saved to a folder. You cannot do an actual upgrade install over Windows 7 RC with all your programs intact.

If you are like me and pre-bought the upgrade at half price, you have to have an activated version of Windows installed to use the upgrade. I have a multiboot system with 3 different hard drives. I have Windows 7 RC on a hard drive with Fedora 11. My plan is to have only that hard drive in the laptop when I use the Windows 7 Upgrade disk so that Windows boot manager does not get installed (I want to use the GRUB boot manager for choosing between Win 7 and Linux). This saves me from having to install and activate Windows on that hard drive before I use the Windows 7 Upgrade disk.

If I did install a version of Windows on that hard drive first, it would have to be a Full version or OEM version. I would need to have the disk(s) to do that, and this is time consuming. If I used a Full version Windows disk to install and activate to meet the requirements of the Windows 7 Upgrade disk, that might cause a problem if that copy of Windows was installed on another hard drive or computer.

[spuddog]

Actually, it is possible to do a direct upgrade. I did this yesterday. if you are starting with a disk or ISO file, extract it to your hard drive. edit a file in the source folder named cversion.ini. you have to change the value to one lower that the version of win7 that you are using. In my case I was using the rc which is 7100, so I changed the number to 7000. Save it and run the setup, now you can choose upgrade instead of custom.

Scott

By the way did you know that every version of win7 is on the same disk. again you have to edit a file in the source folder. I'm away from home now so I don't know the name for sure but I believe it is ei.cfg, you can edit the version name and that is the version that will install. If you totally delete the file win7 will ask you which one you want to install. One thing to remember though you have to have avalid key for the version you install.

[Temetka]

From what I understand they will be suing the same disc setup type as Vista. Meaning that the disc does not determine which version (home, pro, ultimate, enterprise) is installed, but the CD-KEY does. So even if you have an Ultimate key you can use a Home labeled CD and still install Ultimate.

For me I have 3 partitions on my 250GB HD. The first is the Win7 boot partition, the 2nd is Win7 and the 3rd is for Linux. I use GRUB as my boot manager and all works fine. If I were to add an ultrabay HD I would redo my internal drive so it only has Win7 on it and install Linux on the Ultrabay drive. Then I would just choose which HD to boot off of.

[spuddog]

Which brings up and interesting question, If the disk contains all versions, why is there such a difference in price? the development has already been done, the disks (ISO's) are created, why the extreme difference in price?

Of course we know the reason, money and cause the can.

Scott

[GomJabbar]

I may have not been entirely clear in my post above. Here is my situation. One hard drive has installed: Windows 7 RC and Fedora 11 with grub. A second hard drive has installed: Windows XP and Mandriva 2009.1 with grub. A third hard drive has installed: Windows Vista Ultimate.

The drive I will want to install Windows 7 RTM Professional Upgrade to will be the first hard drive with Windows 7 RC on it. If I leave one of the other hard drives in the laptop when I install Windows 7 RTM Professional Upgrade, I am quite sure Windows boot manager will be installed. This I do not want. So to prevent this, I cannot use one of the other versions of Windows to satisfy the requirements for the Upgrade disk to install.

This means If the title of this thread were not true, I would have to install some version of Windows on the drive that currently has Windows 7 RC on it, and activate that copy of Windows (unless I use the IBM Product Recovery Disk Set that has the VLK - which would wipe my Fedora 11 partitions). This I perceive as a pain (for the time involved) and a problem if I already have used that Windows Activation Key and still want to use it on another drive or computer. See?

[Temetka]

Which brings up and interesting question, If the disk contains all versions, why is there such a difference in price? the development has already been done, the disks (ISO's) are created, why the extreme difference in price?

Of course we know the reason, money and cause the can.

Scott

It comes down to feature set and licensing.

If you want more features, you must pay for them.

Nothing new here.

[Temetka]

Hard drive headache stuff.

I understand, I did from your first post also.

However your case is somewhat unique. As a geek you understand what needs to be done, and how to do it. As much as re-loading all the OS's is a pain, and going through activation is a pain as well. So you get to keep your boot loader, but you have to reload all your windows programs and settings. Slightly less pain than paving and nuking.

For the average user though, a fresh install is the way to go. It will remove the malware they swear they don't have, remove all those stupid little programs they download off the internet for more smilies in their chat, and present them with a clean system. That is until they go online and purposely muck it all up again.

[K0LO]

GomJabber:

I don't see a problem. If the upgrade will accept your current Win7 RC as a valid Windows source, then you're in. If not, doesn't this procedure still work? I've read that it will still function with Win7, and is still permissible according to Microsoft.

I would remove the other two drives from the machine when installing Win7 if you're worried about the Win7 installer creating a boot menu with entries for XP and Vista. Yes, the installer will replace GRUB in the MBR with the standard Microsoft MBR, but you can reinstall GRUB from a Live Linux CD to fix that.

[GomJabbar]

No, I don't foresee a problem. I was just responding to Temetka who stated: "This is kind of dumb." regarding to the option to upgrade from Window 7 RC to Windows 7 Professional using an upgrade disk

[spuddog]

If you want more features, you must pay for them.

I certainly agree that some difference in price, according to features is appropriate. What I was referring to was what I (and others) feel is an egregious difference in price. But this is probably a discussion for a different thread.

Scott

[Temetka]

More than likely a different thread would be recommended for it.

The basics come down to more coding work on behalf of Microsoft for those extra features, and the feel they should be paid for them if the user wants them. While their licensing me seem expensive, it's not when compared to licensing for a company or for UNIX.