STILL confused about "Upgrade" installation process.

jackdawg said:

Clean Install of Win 7 Upgrade Home Premium on a blank hard disk worked and activated.
(there was a partition before C: with the OEM Win Vista Setup files, if that makes a difference)

Was the WIndows 7 install disk booted or was the install run from VIsta environment?

dnelms said:

jackdawg said:

Clean Install of Win 7 Upgrade Home Premium on a blank hard disk worked and activated.
(there was a partition before C: with the OEM Win Vista Setup files, if that makes a difference)

I want to see someone who buys a brand new HDD and gets the upgrade disc to install to that, with no old OS present. Given all that has been written, I do no think it is possible, but it's what I'd like to do in an ideal world. I do have Vista, so I would be trying to circumvent the upgrade price.

Yes, it would be as if MS shipped full retail keys with all upgrades.

dnelms said:

jackdawg said:

Clean Install of Win 7 Upgrade Home Premium on a blank hard disk worked and activated.
(there was a partition before C: with the OEM Win Vista Setup files, if that makes a difference)

I want to see someone who buys a brand new HDD and gets the upgrade disc to install to that, with no old OS present. Given all that has been written, I do no think it is possible, but it's what I'd like to do in an ideal world. I do have Vista, so I would be trying to circumvent the upgrade price.

The thing I don't remember is whether I formatted the hard disk myself or let windows setup detect an existing installation and format my hard disk. I did this 3 months ago when the RTM was leaked.

I remember installing Ultimate by mistake and then editing the ISO and reinstalling after selecting Home Premium.

gregrocker said:

jackdawg said:

Clean Install of Win 7 Upgrade Home Premium on a blank hard disk worked and activated.
(there was a partition before C: with the OEM Win Vista Setup files, if that makes a difference)

Was the WIndows 7 install disk booted or was the install run from VIsta environment?

Booted.
Then I installed Win 7 Ultimate by mistake.
Then I edited the ISO and installed Win 7 Home Premium.

The only thing I don't remember is when I formatted the hard disk. Outside the Win 7 Setup or inside the Win 7 setup. This may have an impact on whether it considers it an upgrade or not.

However, the Win 7 Ultimate before Win 7 Home Premium was definitely not activated.

Update on my Windows 2000 to Windows 7 upgrade saga.

Followed up with the Microsoft Store after receiving my two Windows 7 Professional Upgrade packages from my retail vendor (not the MS store). These were purchased during the original 50% off upgrade offer back in early July.

I gave the MS Phone Rep. my case number. And, as promised I was issued 2 full version keys to replace my upgrade version keys. (Issue was that Microsoft withdrew allowing upgrades from Windows 2000 in mid-September, but had stated that W2K qualified for upgrade from late June until mid-September on their website and store site.)

The issued keys show up in the MS Store under my account along with the links for the download media "full" version. I was directed by the MS Rep. to download the ISO files, which I have done.

Interestingly enough, the SHA1 & ISO/CRC check sums are exactly the same as the RTM files listed on Technet, but the file name is shortened. (Windows7Professional32bit.iso VS. en_windows_7_professional_x86_dvd_x15-65804.iso, on technet)

Also, I did a quick comparison of the files on the retail upgrade DVD against the downloaded full version's iso and it's DVD once I burned them. The file count and size are exactly the same (2.34 GB (2,518,513,058 bytes) and 874 files, 200 folders on 32 bit). The DVD's name label is also the same (GRMCPRFRER_EN_DVD for 32 bit).

(I downloaded and checked both the 32 bit and 64 bit ISOs.)

So, without doing a check sum comparison of all 874 files individually, it appears that the retail upgrade media and download full version media are exactly the same. Interesting.

These 2 blog links may help put the upgrade media on clean hard drive issue to bed.

Finally, some answers to Windows 7 upgrade questions | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/cle...rade_media.asp

Have not had a chance to test personally, yet, but they seem to cover all possible options and work-arounds.

I will probably try a clean install with either my Home Premium upgrade or Pro upgrade disks into a VirtualBox virtual machine just to test the above link's data for myself sometime this week. I'll post my results.

That's it for now.

Thanks tim ,

Glad to hear your full versions after all.

Yes the installation media is the same.

Well, I finally tried my clean install...and for what it's worth, this is what happened:

• Replaced my boot drive with a brand new hard drive
• Booted from an install DVD created from the 64 bit Win 7 Pro Upgrade ISO, which I created from the Digital River files
• Installed Win 7
• Tried entering the key at Install...and it didn't like it
• Proceeded without the key...and booted into Windows
• Tried activating the OS with the upgrade key...again with no joy
• Did the fllowing:
  
  • Used Regedit to change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE from 1 to 0
  • Opened an elevated command prompt as administrator
  • typed slmgr -rearm
  • rebooted
• Tried activating again after boot...and life was good.

Definitely easier than installing twice...but man, I just wish that it had asked me for my old XP key. I have one. I just wanted to start with a new hard drive. What a pain.

Thanks to all the folks here who offered advice.

cheers,
Steve
(typing in an activated Windows 7 :) )

I entirely forgot about this thread, but as you all probably know by now I was able to perform a clean install with upgrade media. The only issue was that I had to call Microsoft and use their automated phone system to active it, which took less than 5 minutes. Thanks to those of you who helped.