Windows 7 - Doing a Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version

That's what I have said and repeated over and over in this thread.

I am trying it right now. My disk just arrived.

With 100% all due respect to the administrator that first answered my question in full on page one - I just don't see how that is possible. You were speaking about doing a partition - but are you saying that was on a completely blank hard drive to start? It never asked you to verify that you had a previous version of Windows on the computer or anything? That just doesn't seem right.

This is what my friend told me who is doing it now. Is this the same as a full REFORMAT? I am having some minor hard disk problems right now (or it is just Vista sucking) and want to make sure that I am wiped clean and starting fresh with Windows 7. (My computer is only a year old and top-of-the-line, so it should be running perfectly.)

Additionally, I ordered from Best Buy in late June and it was NOT delivered today. Very sad.

Thank you for the tip on the WiFi driver. I will attempt to do that now. I have never downloaded individual drivers before. Is there a special way to make sure I get the 64 bit one? Also, this is my first computer with a fingerprint scanner, web cam and bluetooth built in, do I need to do anything special to make sure these all work?

I have my my current Full retail Windows 7 Ultimate on one drive, but this does not matter since it is not qualified to upgrade from.

I created a new 40GB unallocated partition on a separate physical RAID hard drives, restarted the computer, booted from the Upgrade retail Windows 7 Home Premium, installed, and activated with the included product key number without having to verify or check for any previous qualifying version of Vista.

I confirm that it works this way 100%.

Very interesting. Would the method proposed by zigzag give me the same result I am looking for?

Brink there is quite a bit of confidence expressed on Technet that ANY activated OS can be used for upgrade, but of course we were also told there was no way to boot from the installer and have it detect.

Just to be sure, I wiped the unactivated RTM drive after booting from a Premium upgrade disk to test whether it will install without any qualifying OS as has been reported here. So far it is proceeding with the install.

This could mean Upgrade shipped with full product keys (stunner) or is looking from boot mode for any activated OS flag.

Not sure which reason may be for it either, but it works.

gregrocker,
With all due respect to our disagreement which has persisted throughout the day, I think Brink has validated what Microsoft sent to me in writing and I posted a week ago.
Tom

Yes, your theory was that it would see a qualifying OS from boot and pass a flag to proceed, which might well be what happened with Brink's test since he had activated 7 on the HDD.

But what still needs to be tested is if Brink's experiment means instead that Upgrades can be installed from boot with no underlying OS, which could either mean they shipped with full product keys, or are malfunctioning - brainy LIW2 was hinting they might be full product keys lately.

Why on earth would MS ship full version keys with Upgrades, knowing word will be disseminated so widely that full retail will only need to be bought going forward by the uninformed? Guess it might be because they can afford it!

Activation was successful! on an Upgrade disk install from boot with a formatted HDD and therefore no underlying OS, using same Upgrade's package key.

The only other possible explanation I can think of is that if indeed they are able to detect an underlying activated OS, then possibly having a non-zeroed HDD could have left activation code on the drive which it is mistakenly reading.

Otherwise it looks like these Upgrades might be full retail versions! (Can I say that?)