How to do clean install Windows 7 upgrade on new drive

I own Windows Vista 64bit, and have ordered Windows 7 Professional 64bit upgrade. How do I do a clean installation of Windows 7 on a new hard drive? Thanks for your help – IM

Hi Imageman

Have a look at these tutorial:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html?ltr=C

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1818-upgrade-install-windows-7-a.html

If you install the upgrade disk on a NEW hard drive it will not work..According to Microsoft Website..(Microsoft Store)

If you have Windows Vista, you can purchase Windows 7 Upgrade versions. You can do a clean install (back up your files, clean install, and reinstall your applications) or an in -place upgrade (Windows 7 installs over Windows Vista).

Click to expand...

You need to have Windows Vista or XP in order to an upgrade.. You can do a clean install over Vista and XP.. BUT YOU HAVE TO HAVE THE OS ON YOUR HARD DRIVE.. If you have a new hard drive with nothing on it you will need the FULL Version of Windows 7..

Hope this Helps...

Ryan2320 said:

If you install the upgrade disk on a NEW hard drive it will not work..According to Microsoft Website..(Microsoft Store)

If you have Windows Vista, you can purchase Windows 7 Upgrade versions. You can do a clean install (back up your files, clean install, and reinstall your applications) or an in -place upgrade (Windows 7 installs over Windows Vista).

Click to expand...

You need to have Windows Vista or XP in order to an upgrade.. You can do a clean install over Vista and XP.. BUT YOU HAVE TO HAVE THE OS ON YOUR HARD DRIVE.. If you have a new hard drive with nothing on it you will need the FULL Version of Windows 7..

Hope this Helps...

Click to expand...

I also plan on putting Win7 upgrade on a new drive.

If I understand you correctly, the only way to do this is to install Vista first and then upgrade...

There is no other way? I was kind of hoping to avoid the Vista install.

Imageman said:

I own Windows Vista 64bit, and have ordered Windows 7 Professional 64bit upgrade. How do I do a clean installation of Windows 7 on a new hard drive? Thanks for your help – IM

Click to expand...

There is a way to do what you want to do but it involes installing a rc release or the enterpise free trial may work also. See this tutorial and then read the tip that is right below Here's How
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1818-upgrade-install-windows-7-a.html
Hope that this may work for you.

You can install the Upgrade to a formatted second hard drive you connect to your p.c. Just start the upgrade from the XP/Vista hard drive and have it install to the second hard drive. No other drives should be attached.

When the upgrade is finished, remove the XP/Vista hard drive and plug the new Win7 upgrade hard drive into that cable and it should start up. Otherwise, run start up repair until it installs the bootloader.

Hey guys,
If you're interested I did some detailed testing of this tonight. Please see my post here:

http://www.sevenforums.com/installa...l-upgrade-windows-7-version-7.html#post323460

A simple option

If you wipe out the hard drive or get a new drive for a clean install you will run into problems with the online registration. There are various work around for this. However, as an owner of Vista 64, you can do a clean install of Windows 7 using the Windows 7 Upgrade disk and then use a simple registry edit to allow registration: How to register windows 7 upgrade

FYI, I have successfully activated Windows 10, using the Windows 7 Upgrade key, on a client's PC when they only had the Windows 7 upgrade disc. Also, they had never previously upgraded to Windows 10.

I clean installed Windows 10 to the new hard drive, and when it asked for the product key, I entered the key from the Windows 7 upgrade disc. It accepted it and automatically activated it.

I realize this thread is pretty old, but I tried all of the tricks in the thread to get Windows 7 back on the new hard drive, to no avail. As of this time, before Microsoft implements any changes to their activation servers, you CAN use a Windows 7 upgrade key to clean install Windows 10.

Namaste,

Todd