Windows 7: Windows 7 Beta To RC Upgrade Instructions

I just had a thought so have a question. (Yes I do think occasionally!!). I am planning on installing Win 7 RC as an upgrade to the current 7000 build (N: drive) and as usual I always install my other OS's from within XP which is my C: drive. That way I can control which drive letters are allotted to my various boots.

If I have that modified image somewhere on my C: drive - do I literally just click setup.exe & proceed from there?

So what's all this I read all over the web about setting up a virtual drive or using Daemon Tools? Or is that only for people who either have no DVD drive and/or no other partition to play with?

I could download Virtual PC from Technet Plus but see no need.

Sorry to sound dense but have never installed an OS from anything other than CD/DVD media.

Question 2 - why not burn the modified ISO to media instead of the original one?

Have a good 4-8gb usb flash drive available? Brink just finished writing a great tutorial on how to install from a usb key rather then burning to a blank dvd if you just happen to lack a dvd burner. Often the older premade desktops as well as many laptops suffer in that area big time! USB Windows 7 Installation Key Drive - Create

Rather then the usual slap a leak on a dvd-r and toss a frisbies when found to be a fake or reformatting a dvd-rw for checking one out the flash drive here gets some use since you are able to start the setup.exe while in 7 as well as in Vista or XP! While the flash drive is still made bootable you don't run into one problem starting the installer while already in Windows.

You wouldn't have any problems starting the setup.exe file while booted in XP to start with being a previous version of Windows and seeing a custom install. The one thing you tend to still see is XP becoming the boot sector and not being mounted at first when booting into 7. Unfortunately that works in reverse of what you want making XP unavailable at first while in 7.

The one thing you will want to be familiar with effects 7 the same as with Vista namely the system restore cancelation problem when dual booting XP with 7. The Vista problem still remains seen in 7 as well where the method to protect 7's points is the same as Vista's. System Restore Points - Stop XP Dual Boot Delete - Vista Forums

The RC installer should simply pack all the 7000 folders into the Windows.old folder rather then trying to use the upgrade option. You would still plan on a fresh install all over again with the new registry. The RC will likely see far better upgrade capability while you still have to be prepared for a fresh Windows all over again when it replaces the 7000 install you have on now.

I installed Windows 7 from XP in the first place anyway and Easy BCD and iReboot from Neosmart helps with getting back and forth. (Same with Vista actually).
I've had singular lack of luck booting from USB here, even tho' it's enabled in the BIOS.
I also have taken care of the dual boot restore issues.
That installation key drive link is very interesting. I'm off to have a good read of it now.
Thanks for the input.

What I did here for the leak test partiion was not even booting from the usb flash drive but simply allowing the installer to copy the setup files over. Once that is complete your system will reboot on it's own and carry on with the rest of the installation. That will then see one 7 replaced by the next.

The best move at this time to see how that will work is grab the 7077 for a quick install even if you have a second drive with some free space available while leaving the 7000 intact. With the EasyBCD tool you can later remove the "previous versions" entry and set which install you want(XP, 7000, or 7077) as the default.

Will just clean install. Instructions are simple enough, but I can't trust a MS OS as far as I can throw it. Best safe than sorry.

It won't matter to me since I can either elect to replace one with the other or go as far as nuking an entire drive including removing the existing partitions to see a clean install on a brand new primary easy enough. Instead of spending the time reformatting even I simply delete one, create the next, and off to clean install quite often.

Mercurial,

I have one small question....

How does one browse to that directory? An ISO file is normally unreadable.

With the more recent builds I have tended to actually remove all the partitions on the hard drive and install Windows 7 without creating any new partitions to see how it sets partitions up.

In early 70x builds following this procedure meant that the windows 7 installer created an unassigned partition on hd0 of about 200mb. In more recent builds this has been reduced to 100mb. I believe this partition is used for recovery and boot data.

use winrar to browse an iso ._.

but I think you extract the iso not just copy the iso to a storage device :P.

OK, thanks very much.