Can Upgrades be done now, activated later

[gregrocker]

Have a bunch of machines waiting for the pre-order upgrade disks coming Oct 22. Several posts have said that the RTM is the same installer that will be shipped as upgrade. Is it possible to do the upgrades from XP and Vista now without waiting for the activation, then input it when it arrives shortly?

I started to try this last night and wasn't prompted for any key after starting RTM disk from desktop, selecting custom and selecting partition to install. Is this because the Upgrade disks have special code required for reading the XP/Vista activation when asking for Win7 upgrade key?

Also if upgrade can be installed to a different partition, then it seems there is a way to get a completely clean install running the installer from the XP/Vista desktop on HDD and installing to another HDD? I am trying to figure out how to get the cleanest possible install here without overwriting if poss.

 

[Lee]

You do not need to "Activate" the install for thirty days; after that the OS will not start up. You will get a message indicating that you need to enter a key or reinstall the OS. For each installation you will need a separate key regardless if it is 32 or 64 bit version, or whether or not it is a specific version (Professional, Ultimate, etc.).

Hope this helps.

 

[gregrocker]

You do not need to "Activate" the install for thirty days; after that the OS will not start up. You will get a message indicating that you need to enter a key or reinstall the OS. For each installation you will need a separate key regardless if it is 32 or 64 bit version, or whether or not it is a specific version (Professional, Ultimate, etc.).

Hope this helps.

Thank you Lee - do you know if this is the same for Upgrade as it is for the full Retail version. The fact that it didn't ask for my key up front makes me wonder if the Upgrade medium has special code that checks XP/Vista activation and then Win7 activation. How does it know that this is an upgrade and not a full retail install if it is being done as a Custom install? There is nothing I can see that is different about the installation.