Can I upgrade Win 7 RC to Win 7 using $99 upgrade?

I see. I think the "free upgrade" offer info going around is what confused me. Those free upgrade to Win 7 don't apply to new systems installed with Vista Home Basic (which OEMs don't seem to do anymore anyway). But that doesn't mean that you can't upgrade from Vista Home Basic to 7 Home Premium. It does look like it will be possible after searching around for more info just now.

I think that people have posted that you will be able to do a clean install by first installing without the product key, so you get the 30 day evaluation, then you can do an upgrade from there.

If this works then I don't think it matters what you owned before as long as you do a clean installation.

Dzomlija said:

quidpro said:

I've got a laptop which only has Win 7 RC installed, no dual boot of anything else. Can this be "upgraded" using the current offers, or will it need to have a full retail version? (The laptop came with Vista Basic installed so I wouldn't be able to upgrade with that original config anyway.)

Sorry if this has already been covered.

No.

Sorry to be so blunt, but you just cannot upgrade from any BETA or RC version. You'll have to purchase a full version when the time comes, and perform a clean install. This is by design.

I have links to two sources from microsoft here that say otherwise.

As long as you have vista installed, or a vista disk, you can do a upgrade to the same version of win7 from vista. And you can do a clean install from the disk, without clean installing and then activating, the upgrade doesnt necesarrily mean you have to do an upgrade, it means you had vista before. vista made you put in the xp disk if xp wasnt installed and then it did a clean install of vista and all was good.