Windows Pro 64 upgrade from Digital River.
made ISO as per other peoples instructions on here.
Booted from ISO.
DELETED existing C drive
re-added it as a new drive
FORMATTED it.
Continued with the install (which took a long time to complete the installation compared to the RC version)
It accepted my product key and activated 100% fine. So it looks like a clean install without prior op system does work.
while I didn't reformat before I ran the setup, I had reformatted completely before I ran the previously installed RC win7
Sadly, I can confirm what others are saying
I removed my HD, put in a bigger new one and re-installed.
product key would not be accepted.
Looks like there does has to be some trace of an existing op
Have quickly installed Vista (which is what I'm typing this from) and then will try a clean install and hope that works fine.
one thing I have noticed, I have a fairly hi spec i7 6GB RAM system, with the pre-release versions of Windows 7, it took under 30 mins to completely install.
With both my original clean install onto my old hard drive, and my failed install on my new hard drive, it took about 40 - 50 mins to complete the final something along the lines of "completing installation" stage, and gave the appearence that it was stuck (but I waited and sure enough, eventually it worked).
That is annoying enough when the product key is accepted, but to spend over an hour to get to the point where it tells you the key is invalid, is simply wrong in my opinion.
Will get back in just over an hour presuming the custom clean install works fine over me formatting this from within the setup to confirm all is working