Does upgrade require proof of prior version?

The didital river download on Thursday and matching key they sent out , turned out to be a full retail install by mistake (?) so when this installs perfectly on a Virgin disc, please do not do around telling everyone how marvelous the upgrade is, because you a one of the lucky ones with a full retail install key and not an upgrade.

pparks1 said:

I guess being a computer techie just makes this clean install process seem a lot less daunting. Backup some data, take 15 minutes to reinstall, plus install a dozen or so apps, but data back. Less than 2 hours total and a clean and great running system. I just don't see why this is such an ordeal for some.

Bold part is the problem. Think about it this way : user has a XP/Vista install on a 500GB hard drive. There is about 100GB of data to save and they have NO other hard drives to save the data to and no extra money to buy an extra internal/external drive. On top of all, they have no one with that extra external that they could lend. This is really problematic.

So, this important that they do an in-place upgrade to keep their data.

It's not everyone that has a setup like mine (4 HDDs on my part). Even me, backing up the data I have on my system partition takes a little while (30-40min for the single user folder).

FYI, I have about 650GB of music, videos, documents & personnal matters. This is really not easy to backup to somewhere safe. Now, imagine someone that needs to backup a full big HDD to DVDs. You'll feel the pain

Lebon14 said:

Bold part is the problem. Think about it this way : user has a XP/Vista install on a 500GB hard drive. There is about 100GB of data to save and they have NO other hard drives to save the data to and no extra money to buy an extra internal/external drive. On top of all, they have no one with that extra external that they could lend. This is really problematic.

So, this important that they do an in-place upgrade to keep their data.

It's not everyone that has a setup like mine (4 HDDs on my part). Even me, backing up the data I have on my system partition takes a little while (30-40min for the single user folder).

FYI, I have about 650GB of music, videos, documents & personnal matters. This is really not easy to backup to somewhere safe. Now, imagine someone that needs to backup a full big HDD to DVDs. You'll feel the pain

[Blatent plug for WHS]
Just build a Windows Home Server! :) You'll have daily backups and also have a centralized place for all of your music, photos, videos, etc.
[/End Blatent plug for WHS]

I did a clean install on a new SSD hard drive in my laptop (took the Vista drive out for archive storage) and I installed from W7 Ultimate Upgrade disc without any activation issues.

I don't understand what all of the fuss is about. On Line activation went fine!

Lebon14 said:

pparks1 said:

I guess being a computer techie just makes this clean install process seem a lot less daunting. Backup some data, take 15 minutes to reinstall, plus install a dozen or so apps, but data back. Less than 2 hours total and a clean and great running system. I just don't see why this is such an ordeal for some.

Bold part is the problem. Think about it this way : user has a XP/Vista install on a 500GB hard drive. There is about 100GB of data to save and they have NO other hard drives to save the data to and no extra money to buy an extra internal/external drive. On top of all, they have no one with that extra external that they could lend. This is really problematic.

#1) 2 partitions on the hard drive could eliminate this problem. Say, an 80GB for the C drive and 420GB for the D drive and they could make sure their 100GB of data is on the D drive and no extra hardware needed

#2). External hard drives are CHEAP. 1TB external Western Digitals are $99 at NewEgg. Newegg.com - Western Digital Element 1TB 3.5" Black External Hard Drive - External Hard Drives. Everybody should always have an external drive anyway to back up their data anyway. Hard drives do fail.

Lebon14 said:

FYI, I have about 650GB of music, videos, documents & personnal matters. This is really not easy to backup to somewhere safe.

Sure it is. It's simple. 1 external hard drive. You can use the robocopy command which comes free with Windows, or you can download SyncToy which is free. It simply mirrors what you have on the source, with what is on the backup. And it only gets files which have changed, so the first backup takes awhile and subsequent backups usually take about 1-2 minutes.


Now, imagine someone that needs to backup a full big HDD to DVDs. You'll feel the pain [/QUOTE]

oblio98 said:

I did a clean install on a new SSD hard drive in my laptop (took the Vista drive out for archive storage) and I installed from W7 Ultimate Upgrade disc without any activation issues.

I don't understand what all of the fuss is about. On Line activation went fine!

Your upgrade version is actually a full retail. Trust me......an upgrade disc booted to a virgin SSD with no previous OS in evidence, would fail to install
and accept your Key.

Nosmo said:

Many users are having their key rejected for the following reason.

If you have purchased an 'Upgrade' you MUST run setup from within Vista or XP.

You purchased an upgrade so you must have something to upgrade from.

Trying to boot to a virgin drive with no memory of a previous OS will not work.

Yes there are hacks but its only been 3 days and we don't know how MS will handle installs that are not legal.

It is not true that "If you have purchased an 'Upgrade' you MUST run setup from within Vista or XP". I purchesed an Upgrade disk and did a clean install on an unformated partition by booting from the upgrade disk. I did have XP installed on another partition so w7 upgrade must have detected it. It created a multiboot system with a boot menu to choose the OS from.

I do have a question though - What if a person did a custom install from within XP and wipped out XP - then later had a HDD crash and had to do a reinstall? There would be no XP on the computer to verify.