Windows 7 Upgrade Question

Rooks said:

When i buy W7 do i have to buy the OEM version in order to be able to upgrade my motherboard and hard drive in the future, or can i just buy the regular upgrade version?

If you upgrade your motherboard (and maybe HD), Windows will complain that it is already registered. At that point, you'll probably be sent to a page with instructions on how to verify your license. You'll be pointed to an 800 number where they will give you a new number after you give them your old license number.

That's what happened to me with XP.

Microsoft realizes that people with valid licenses will be upgrading their hardware and failing the checks they have for a valid license when they do, so they have a way to essentially get another valid license code.

For reinstalling Windows at this point and even allowing for hardware upgrades to a certain extent the reactivation is generally automatic even when performing a full reinstall if not a repair install. Initially with XP being the first to require activation you would end up calling into MS if you reinstalled Windows too soon or upgraded a hardware where the hardware profile was effected like a new board or drive.

Typically an OEM disk is tied to one machine while the retail disk can be used on the next machine you buy or build as a replacement system for the present. You take the retail with you while the OEM goes with the machine. one disk per machine.

Depending on which edition you plan to be running the preorders for the Home Premium and Professional editions have been seeing 50% discounts for both upgrade and full version disks of either.

With the upgrade disk you will still need a disk from a previous version in order to perform a clean install on the new drive. At least wirh a Vista upgrade disk once the new drive was preferrably prepartitioned and formatted to be ready for use you would boot from the upgrade disk to perform the first of two installations.

With the first installation you don't enter the product key since it wont' be activated where you would then proceed to run the installer from inside Windows. When going to enter the key and activate the second upgrade install you would then be prompted for the disk of the previous version of Windows.

When going from the RC to the retail release here the disk will be a full install version since I usually end performing custom installs and dual/multi boots of OSs. Since the upgrade disks are not out yet the method use for a Vista upgrade disk still has to be tried out on 7 later this month when the disks are first available.

As for cloning a drive that only tends to preserve the present installation and files but wouldn't be any help for the 7 upgrade. Once 7 is running later on the new drive you can import files from the present drive onto a clean install rather then trying to upgrade a clone. First you will need to start backing things up however if the present drive is going.

An activated previous install or a regular install or upgrade disk for verification. The best way however is to follow the upgrade information. Once 7 is out more people will have had time to find what will work the best since untill the 22nd most with the RTMs are still from the downloads off of TechNet or MSDN there.

Personally and the most often recommended advice when first going to install any new version or other OS is to plan a totally clean install from scratch! Once you are familar with how things work then you can run it as an upgrade to see better results rather then accidently trashing a working installation if a mishap occurs.

Have a disaster recovery plan inplace is the otherwise typical advice first given to testers as well as first time users of a new Windows.