Hello people, as I've been researching online that there is ONLY one way of going to from version to version when upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7. For example, Vista Home Premium to 7 Home Premium. You technically (In Microsoft's eyes) can't go from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional. People bought the $30 Student 7 Professional from DR when it was available, and had Vista Home Premium on their laptop. Mistake? I don't think so. We are also assuming that you have a legitimate copy of Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional Upgrade. We also assume no liability for any damages or data loss this may occur from doing my tutorial..
First off we need things done before we can do the upgrades. (Yes Upgrades).
1. Backup everything you need saved (Make an image with Acronis or any backup program)
2. Have a copy of Windows 7 (Any edition works, I'll tell you why later)
3. Have a quite some time to do this (Upgrades took a total of probably half a day)
Assuming you did the first 3 steps continue....
So you have a DVD copy or image of Windows 7. Extract the image or copy the disc to a folder on the HD of the computer you are upgrading. We are going to be going from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium as this is the only way we can do it (THANKS MICROSOFT).
View the extracted dvd/image on your HD. You will see a Sources folder, and you will see a ei.cfg. This can be edited with Wordpad or notepad, either one will do fine.
You will see this:
Remove Professional, and put HomePremium instead of Professional underneath [EditionID].
Make it look like this:
Save it and continue.
Run the setup.exe inside the directory where you extracted/copied the Windows 7 Installation. It will do the upgrade, warn you about any incompatibilities.
When it finishes the installation, DO NOT ENTER A KEY! Your Professional key will not work here.
Once done, we are going to go back to the DVD image extraction location (Where you copied/extracted the Windows 7 DVD).
Remember the ei.cfg we edited using notepad/wordpad? Well we need to change the [EditionID] back to professional. We can't do an anytime upgrade by using the Professional key because Microsoft made special keys for that purpose and the ones you received were not the correct ones.
Once you do that, save it, then run setup.exe.
You are going to go through the same steps as before, but at the end of the upgrade, it'll ask you for a key, put your Professional key in this time.
Wallah! Run Updates and Install/remove any programs that got blown away by the upgrade. It happens sometimes when parts of a program don't work properly on Windows 7. I was able to do this on 2 laptops for work.
To sum it up, we basically did 2 upgrades Vista to 7 HP, then from 7 HP to 7 Pro.
Why it works? Probably because when you don't put a key in, Windows 7 has a default key it inputs automatically.
First off we need things done before we can do the upgrades. (Yes Upgrades).
1. Backup everything you need saved (Make an image with Acronis or any backup program)
2. Have a copy of Windows 7 (Any edition works, I'll tell you why later)
3. Have a quite some time to do this (Upgrades took a total of probably half a day)
Assuming you did the first 3 steps continue....
So you have a DVD copy or image of Windows 7. Extract the image or copy the disc to a folder on the HD of the computer you are upgrading. We are going to be going from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium as this is the only way we can do it (THANKS MICROSOFT).
View the extracted dvd/image on your HD. You will see a Sources folder, and you will see a ei.cfg. This can be edited with Wordpad or notepad, either one will do fine.
You will see this:
Code:
[EditionID]
Professional
[Channel]
OEM
[VL]
0Make it look like this:
Code:
[EditionID]
HomePremium
[Channel]
OEM
[VL]
0Run the setup.exe inside the directory where you extracted/copied the Windows 7 Installation. It will do the upgrade, warn you about any incompatibilities.
When it finishes the installation, DO NOT ENTER A KEY! Your Professional key will not work here.
Once done, we are going to go back to the DVD image extraction location (Where you copied/extracted the Windows 7 DVD).
Remember the ei.cfg we edited using notepad/wordpad? Well we need to change the [EditionID] back to professional. We can't do an anytime upgrade by using the Professional key because Microsoft made special keys for that purpose and the ones you received were not the correct ones.
Once you do that, save it, then run setup.exe.
You are going to go through the same steps as before, but at the end of the upgrade, it'll ask you for a key, put your Professional key in this time.
Wallah! Run Updates and Install/remove any programs that got blown away by the upgrade. It happens sometimes when parts of a program don't work properly on Windows 7. I was able to do this on 2 laptops for work.
To sum it up, we basically did 2 upgrades Vista to 7 HP, then from 7 HP to 7 Pro.
Why it works? Probably because when you don't put a key in, Windows 7 has a default key it inputs automatically.
My Computer
At a glance
Windows 7 UltimatePhenom II X4 @ 3.7Ghz8GB of DDR21066MSI 4890 1GB OC to 1000/2200
- Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
- Custom
- OS
- Windows 7 Ultimate
- CPU
- Phenom II X4 @ 3.7Ghz
- Motherboard
- MSI K9A2 Platinum 790FX
- Memory
- 8GB of DDR21066
- Graphics Card(s)
- MSI 4890 1GB OC to 1000/2200
- Sound Card
- HT Omega Claro Plus
- Monitor(s) Displays
- Samsung 22" LCD
- Hard Drives
- Seagate Barracuda 400GB 10K RPM
Western Digital 74GB 10K RPM
Western Digital 640GB 7.2K RPM Caviar Black
- PSU
- Rosewill 750W CONTINUOUS @ 40C
- Case
- Coolermaster Scout
- Cooling
- Fans, lot's of them.
