Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version

How to Do a Clean Install with an Upgrade Windows 7 Version​

   Information

This will show you how to do a Clean Install using a retail Upgrade Windows 7 installation disc.

   Warning

Remember that you need to legally own a valid qualifying previous version of Windows to use a Upgrade Windows 7, and to stop using (or uninstall) the qualifying OS while you have the upgrade installed. Microsoft only made doing a clean install from a upgrade Windows 7 possible to make it more convenient so you do not have to reinstall both the old Windows version (ex: Vista) and upgrade to Windows 7 everytime you needed or wanted to reinstall.

If you do not legally own a valid qualifying previous version of Windows, then you are violating the terms of Microsoft's Windows 7 End User License Agreement and could get your product key number invalidated by Microsoft. Plus, it is considered illegal.

For more about this, please see: Microsoft SMB Community Blog : Regardless of what any hack says, a Windows 7 Upgrade is an Upgrade. What you need to know.

OPTION ONE

A Normal Clean Install

1. Do a clean install at boot without checking the Automatically activate Windows when I'm online box during the installation process.

2. When the installation is finished, then manually activate Windows 7 with your product key number.

3. If your Windows should fail to activate, then pick up at step 2 in OPTION THREE below.

OPTION TWO

Through a Custom Install

   Note

This option will let you do a clean install of Windows 7 without formating the current Windows installation to have your current Windows installation backed up to the Windows.old folder during the installation of your retail upgrade Windows 7. This way you can copy any files back that you want from the C:\Windows.old folder (previous installation) back into your new installation afterwards.

1. Do a custom install at boot or from within your current Windows installation without checking the Automatically activate Windows when I'm online box during the installation process.

2. When the installation is finished, then manually activate Windows 7 with your product key number.

3. Copy any files that you want back from the C:\Windows.old folder into where you want it in you new installation.

4. You can now delete the Windows.old folder using Disk Cleanup to have a clean install now.

OPTION THREE

Clean Install with a Registry Workaround for Error Code 0xc004f061

   Note

If you get a activation error code 0xc004f061 while doing OPTION ONE or OPTION TWO above, then you will need to use this option instead

1. Do a clean install of your upgrade Windows 7 at boot without checking the Automatically activate Windows when I'm online box during the installation process.
NOTE: If you already did this from OPTION ONE above and got a activation error, then skip this step and just proceed to step 2 below instead. There's no need to reinstall again.

2. Click on the Download button below to download the .bat file below, and save it to your desktop.
Activate_Windows_Upgrade_after_Clean_Install.bat


Download


3. Right click on the downloaded .bat file, and click on Run as administrator.

4. If prompted, click/tap on Run and Yes (UAC).
NOTE: If you like, you can stop getting the Run prompt by unblocking the downloaded .bat file.

5. You will now notice a command prompt quickly open and close while applying the changes to your registry.

6. Click/tap on OK. (see screenshot below)

7. Restart the computer.

8. When the computer is finished restarting, then manually activate Windows 7 with your product key number.

OPTION FOUR

Double Installing Windows 7

   Note

This option is the same that was used to do a clean install of an upgrade copy of Windows 7. It's more work, but if the options above did not work for you, then this should since this is the most reliable option.

1. Do a clean install of your upgrade Windows 7 at boot without checking the Automatically activate Windows when I'm online box during the installation process, and do not activate Windows 7. When finished with the clean install, do not or install any Windows Updates, drivers, or programs yet.

2. When finished with the clean install, start at step 4 at this link to do an in-place "upgrade" install with your upgrade Windows 7 installation disk from within the just now finished clean install of Windows 7.

3. When the in-place upgrade installation is completely finished, then manually activate Windows 7 with your product key number. You can now also install any Windows Updates drivers, and programs you like.
That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Do a Upgrade Installation with Windows 7
• How to Do a Clean Installation with Windows 7
• How to Do a Custom Installation of Windows 7
• How to Create a Windows 7 Installation USB Key
• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/30470-make-bootable-iso-student-d-l.html
• How to Partition the Hard Drive in a Windows 7 Install
• How to Install Windows 7 on Computer with Less than 512MB RAM
• How to Install Windows 7 Using "Unified Extensible Firmware Interface" (UEFI)

 

[Brink]

Hmm, not sure why OPTION THREE isn't working for you, but OPTION FOUR should.

Is this a retail upgrade copy?

 

[givemereplay]

I bought it through my school computer store. It has the "FOR USE BY STUDENTS AND FACULTY" label on the disk.

Strangely, the first time I ran the activation script, my computer didn't reboot properly. The monitor and mouse turned off but the tower stayed lit up and running for several minutes. Finally I did a hard reset.

Now I've run the script a few more times, and it doesn't seem to auto-reboot. However, even when I manually reboot it I'm still getting the activation error.

Edit: you should find this interesting- I just tried to manually edit the registry to rearm the activations and got this error-

"Error: 0xC004D307 The maximum allowed number of re-arms has been exceeded"

Mind you I literally reinstalled the OS yesterday, haven't activated it yet, and haven't even had any success with rearming it. Now I'm perplexed.

Edit 2: I thought I had this solved when I found a method to give me more attempts to rearm (found here: http://www.mydigitallife.info/use-r...lay-and-skip-vista-activation-almost-forever/) but yet somehow, despite getting the success message from the slmgr -rearm command it is STILL giving me that horrid error from before.

 

[Brink]

You have used up your 3 rearms. Each time you ran that command it used one up.

You'll have no choice but OPTION FOUR now.

 

[givemereplay]

Any idea why it didn't want to let me activate after any of the rearm attempts? It's not like I rearmed three times without trying to activate at all.

Also thanks for monitoring this thread even after all these years.

 

[Brink]

Could be anything from a mistake made somewhere to the type of installation disc they used.

 

[givemereplay]

Called Microsoft using your registration by phone guide. Computerized voice rejected my attempts, so I was transferred to a very sweet Indian woman. I explained my situation to her, she had me type a short code into the Run window. The window it popped up told me to reboot. I did so, then entered my product key in the window it popped up upon reboot. Activation successful. Total time on the phone- 5 mins. Great job Microsoft, thank you Brink for your awesome guides and superhuman abilities.

 

[Britton30]

Called Microsoft using your registration by phone guide. Computerized voice rejected my attempts, so I was transferred to a very sweet Indian woman. I explained my situation to her, she had me type a short code into the Run window. The window it popped up told me to reboot. I did so, then entered my product key in the window it popped up upon reboot. Activation successful. Total time on the phone- 5 mins. Great job Microsoft, thank you Brink for your awesome guides and superhuman abilities.

Good job, that's a lot less that I spent on calls to MS.
BTW, Brink isn't human.

 

[Brink]

That's great news givemereplay.

Gary, you spilled the beans. Now the whole world will know.

 

[Petey7]

I have a question (or two) regarding legal use of the upgrade license. I'll go ahead and give you the full story.

I have a laptop that I purchased a few months ago to replace my old Dell laptop. The Dell came with XP and I purchased Windows 7 Pro Upgrade to put on it. when the screen died in it, I went ahead a purchase my current computer, which came with Windows 7 Home Premium. A couple weeks ago I got curious and decided to see if Anytime Upgrade would accept the upgrade license as an upgrade key (I realize they are actually two different things). Sure enough it did, so I went ahead and let it switch me to 7 Pro. As far as I know, it was fully activated, or at least I saw nothing to the contrary and didn't question things. This is where my issue comes in. A couple days ago, I reinstalled Windows because of a number or performance issues I was having and I had never removed most of the Toshiba bloatware anyways. I used a Windows 7 SP1 universal install disc I had made, and I went ahead and installed 7 Pro. I then used option 3 to activate, which I knew to do from reinstalling Windows on the old computer once or twice. It wasn't until afterwards that I thought about the actual terms of the upgrade license and not being able to remember seeing anything about using it to upgrade from one version of 7 to another.

So, my question is, as far as you know, is this setup legal. If it matters, I do have two retail Windows XP licenses that have been in disuse for a while now. The computers they first went on original had ME and were disposed of sometime ago. It seems like if I installed XP and then 7 Pro it would be legal, so why not just install 7 Pro?

 

[VistaKing]

You may install windows 7 over itself so that's legal . So lets say you're installing windows 7 with an upgrade DVD and you try to input the key that is inside the retail DVD case it will not work . So for it to work you would have to reinstall
( upgrade ) windows within windows for the key to work which is legal .

 

[Petey7]

Actually, what you said would be in violation of the EULA (and thus illegal) if you were installing on a computer that did not have Windows installed on it previously and you did not own a retail copy of any other version of Windows. The fact that you can get away with it does not make it right. That is, unless you are trying to say that it is okay to use an upgrade version to go from one edition of Windows 7 to another. In which case I would still like to get a confirmation from Brink.

 

[Brink]

Hey VK and Petey,

As per the red warning box at the top of the tutorial, Microsoft allows you to do be able to only do a clean install with an upgrade Windows 7 instead of having to install the qualifying OS (ex: Vista) first and upgrade to Windows 7. This was done for convenience for their customers.

Doing a clean install with an upgrade Windows 7 is only legal (EULA) if you own a qualifying OS (ex: Vista) and do not use it's product key while the upgrade Windows 7 is installed and activated.

If you do not own a qualifying OS and just purchase an upgrade copy because it's cheaper than a full copy, then it would not be a legal installation and you would be at risk of having it's product key permanently deactivated by Microsoft.

 

[Petey7]

Did you see my earlier post? I was trying to be sure my specific set up was legal and was hoping for a specific yes or no answer. As I stated before, I do own a couple retail copies of XP, but XP was never installed on this my current PC.

 

[VistaKing]

Wouldn't this tutorial be illegal to do then ? If you are installing Windows on a clean hard drive using an upgrade DVD version and not input the key that came within the DVD box . To be able to use the key you would have to reinstall windows with the key this time for it work ? The tutorial is listed in winsupersite.com

I don't know anyone that does an " upgrade " on top of an older OS Install . Everyone I know does clean installs on old and new pcs .

Note : Not trying to start an argument here just trying to get some clarification

 

[Brink]

Did you see my earlier post? I was trying to be sure my specific set up was legal and was hoping for a specific yes or no answer. As I stated before, I do own a couple retail copies of XP, but XP was never installed on this my current PC.

Yes, you will be able to legally use the tutorial with your upgrade Windows 7 since you own a qualifying retail XP that you basically are replacing with Windows 7 by no longer using the XP key while the upgrade Windows 7 is installed and activated.

 

[VistaKing]

He stated XP has never been installed on that computer . So as long as you own a physical copy of previous windows versions you may legally install windows 7 with an upgrade disk to do a clean install ?

 

[Petey7]

Wouldn't this tutorial be illegal to do then ....

What I said was if you did not own a copy of another version of windows and the PC you were installing on had never had Windows on it. This tutorial is mostly for cases like my old computer. I had done an upgrade from XP to 7, but then my original hard drive failed. It doesn't make sense to install XP and then 7. It would just waste time, so instead I just installed 7 and used option 3. I still owned the XP license, and XP had been installed on the computer in the past, I just skipped an hour or more of wasted effort.

My new computer is a different story through.

 

[Brink]

Wouldn't this tutorial be illegal to do then ? If you are installing Windows on a clean hard drive using an upgrade DVD version and not input the key that came within the DVD box . To be able to use the key you would have to reinstall windows with the key this time for it work ? The tutorial is listed in winsupersite.com

I don't know anyone that does an " upgrade " on top of an older OS Install . Everyone I know does clean installs on old and new pcs .

Note : Not trying to start an argument here just trying to get some clarification

Just like with anything, it depends on how it's used by the individual.

If you follow the red warning and what I posted above to comply with the EULA, then it's perfectly legal.

Otherwise, the individual would be performing an illegal action, and would thus be subject to any penalty of law, and/or having the key permanently deactivated by Microsoft.

 

[Brink]

He stated XP has never been installed on that computer . So as long as you own a physical copy of previous windows versions you may legally install windows 7 with an upgrade disk to do a clean install ?

If it's a retail copy of a qualifying OS, then yes.

The upgrade is to replace a qualifying OS by either clean install (if own a retail qualifying OS) or upgrade install (if own a retail or OEM qualifying OS).

 

[VistaKing]

To each their own . Doubt Microsoft would call up their lawyers I'd they found out . They have more fish to fry .

Note : don't worry i buy my windows copies from retail stores .