Upgrading Damaged Windows 7

Bat 1 said:

In the OP's first thread on this problem he was told that "some" system corruptions will cause an upgrade to fail. In his second thread on this problem he was told that his Windows Key isn't "Kosher" and he verified that fact, Given those two facts, I would think that since Microsoft has been quite lenient in allowing Free upgrades to Win 10, that the small cost of a extra HDD would be a Good Idea. Clone the present OS then attempt the upgrade and see what'll happen.....

Can you point me to where this took place? I don't remember this.

I paid for a download back in 2012. It's a retail, not OEM installation. What's the difference?

torchwood said:

Hi Joe,

that key is for an MSDN subscrition product, and is marked as NOT for Resale, can only be sold by MS.

you could try the MS download site, but i dont think you will have any joy

Download Windows 7 Disc Images (ISO Files)

Roy

Joe Ciaravino said:

Roy,

I tried the link you provided:

Download Windows 7 Disc Images (ISO Files)

MS was not happy with the key.

What does that mean? Do I have a "bad" copy of Windows?

I found my original ISO, without any updates and without SP1. I can slipstream all updates into it including SP1........unless I can get a new copy with updates already included, somehow.

If You click on "My Posts" you can't find the posts yourself ?

There is nothing like a clean install. I do it every two years. (in fact I restore an image taken just after a clean install with all drivers and updates installed)
- Repair Install - Windows 7 Help Forums
- MS releases SP2 for Windows 7 - Windows 7 Help Forums

Joe Ciaravino said:

I paid for a download back in 2012. It's a retail, not OEM installation. What's the difference?

"Retail" means that you can install it on any computer which can run Windows 7 (on only one computer at a time). "OEM" means that you can install it only on the computer it came with.

Megahertz07 said:

There is nothing like a clean install. I do it every two years. (in fact I restore an image taken just after a clean install with all drivers and updates installed)
- Repair Install - Windows 7 Help Forums
- MS releases SP2 for Windows 7 - Windows 7 Help Forums

Are you saying you do a repair install every 2 years?
If you do a clean install, that means starting over from the beginning and reinstalling everything. Is there an easy way to do this or am I missing something?

Joe Ciaravino said:

Are you saying you do a repair install every 2 years?
If you do a clean install, that means starting over from the beginning and reinstalling everything. Is there an easy way to do this or am I missing something?

Basically, yes. After I installed Win 7 and Office 2010 on my new computer almost 2 years ago, installed all drivers and updates, I did a disk image. Every 2 years I restore the image and reinstall all other software.
The performance improvement of a clean install over a old installation is huge.
Over the years, installing and uninstalling software, leaves behind a lot of trash.

Megahertz07 said:

Basically, yes. After I installed Win 7 and Office 2010 on my new computer almost 2 years ago, installed all drivers and updates, I did a disk image. Every 2 years I restore the image and reinstall all other software.
The performance improvement of a clean install over a old installation is huge.
Over the years, installing and uninstalling software, leaves behind a lot of trash.

Unfortunately, you are correct. In many respects, Windows is still a toy OS after all these years. There is no reason why the phenomenon you describe should exist, but it surely does. Windows is layer upon layer of cruft upon cruft upon workaround upon workaround. And Windows 10 is no improvement. There's just too much going on, much of it to facilitate corporate control freakery. Just too much stuff. Windows 7 is surely my last Windows after all these years. When I started in this biz, Microsoft's only product was a BASIC interpreter, and they only got into the DOS thing by accident. I think they were in over their heads right then and there. But it sure did make them pots of money!

Megahertz07 said:

Basically, yes. After I installed Win 7 and Office 2010 on my new computer almost 2 years ago, installed all drivers and updates, I did a disk image. Every 2 years I restore the image and reinstall all other software.
The performance improvement of a clean install over a old installation is huge.
Over the years, installing and uninstalling software, leaves behind a lot of trash.

Great idea. Wish I had done that (actually wasn't aware of system images) back in 2014 when I built this. Too late now.

A repair install is probably what I will do. It would be a huge amount of work to do a fresh install at this point.

Joe Ciaravino said:

I don't like Windows 10. I like Windows 7. What happens after updates end in 2020? As things change, Win 7 won't keep up. Is there a way to keep Win 7 "updated" once Microsoft stops updating it?

You have a few choices:

• Continue with Windows 7, and hope for the best. I don't recommend this, because you will be vulnerable to security threats.
• Upgrade to Windows 8.1, and install Classic Shell. Classic Shell makes Windows 8.1 look and feel like Windows 7. Best of all, you will receive updates till 2023.
• Move to some version of Linux. You could start transitioning now by installing virtual machine software in your Windows 7 machine, and setting up a Linux virtual machine. This would let you check it out. Or you could set up a Linux Live flash drive, and boot into Linux from time to time to try it out. If you decide to go with Linux, you could install Linux on the hard drive, then set up Windows 7 (or 8.1) in a virtual machine inside of Linux. (That is how I have set things up on my computer.) With a Windows 7 (or 8.1) virtual machine inside of Linux, you will have transitioned to Linux, while having Windows available by just clicking on the VM icon. This would allow you to use Windows at any time for those tasks you can't yet do in Linux, while steadily learning Linux and getting things working in Linux. At some point, you probably won't need Windows anymore, but it will be there if you need it.

If your computer doesn't have at least 4 GB of RAM, the virtual machine option probably won't be a good choice, because there just won't be enough memory to support both the host OS and the vm OS.

mrjimphelps said:

You have a few choices:

• Continue with Windows 7, and hope for the best. I don't recommend this, because you will be vulnerable to security threats.
• Upgrade to Windows 8.1, and install Classic Shell. Classic Shell makes Windows 8.1 look and feel like Windows 7. Best of all, you will receive updates till 2023.
• Move to some version of Linux. You could start transitioning now by installing virtual machine software in your Windows 7 machine, and setting up a Linux virtual machine. This would let you check it out. Or you could set up a Linux Live flash drive, and boot into Linux from time to time to try it out. If you decide to go with Linux, you could install Linux on the hard drive, then set up Windows 7 (or 8.1) in a virtual machine inside of Linux. (That is how I have set things up on my computer.) With a Windows 7 (or 8.1) virtual machine inside of Linux, you will have transitioned to Linux, while having Windows available by just clicking on the VM icon. This would allow you to use Windows at any time for those tasks you can't yet do in Linux, while steadily learning Linux and getting things working in Linux. At some point, you probably won't need Windows anymore, but it will be there if you need it.

If your computer doesn't have at least 4 GB of RAM, the virtual machine option probably won't be a good choice, because there just won't be enough memory to support both the host OS and the vm OS.

Exactly choice 3. See #6 here:

What To Do After Jan 2020 - Windows 7 Help Forums