Solved Windows 7 - upgrade from Home Premium to Professional

[SIW2]

gBurner - A powerful CD, DVD and BD burning software

now it is making the iso from what is in the dvd drive



To make it an all edition iso

look in the sources folder and delete ei.cfg.

Then click File > Save and yes to overwrite.

 

[SIW2]

It is like magic.

 

[Gorlash]

This is what mine shows

View attachment 411098

Aye, that's what mine looked like too... I should have just left everything alone, but I changed it to "Normal startup", which apparently means 'delete the OS and make the system unusable'.

Anyway, I've booted to my original W7HE disk, but left the other disk mounted, and the partition table appears to be fine, 'Disk Management' window shows System (J as System,Active,Primary Partition... it just isn't bootable.

 

[Gorlash]

Okay, I'll try some of these solutions when I get home this afternoon after class.
I also saw another potential solution at this site:
Top 5 Solutions to Fix Error Code 0xc000000e in Windows 7, 8, 8.1 & 10

I'm reviewing some of those suggestions as well...

 

[Gorlash]

If you have a win7 dvd/iso file which includes SP1, you can easily change it to all editions media.

You can't delete the sources\ei.cfg file directly from a dvd, so create an iso from the dvd using something like gburner ( which is a fully functional trial for 30 days). Then delete the ei.cfg from the new iso. Then burn the new iso to dvd/bootable usb stick.

Please clarify one thing about this process? Is this actually going to give me a repair disk? Or will it just be a re-install disk? I don't really want to re-install; if it comes to that, I'd rather fall back on re-duping my existing W7HP disk, then upgrade to Professional, like I did last week...

 

[SIW2]

A "repair disc " is usually taken to mean the microsoft system recovery options, they are included in the installation media.

When you see the install now window, click "repair my computer" at the bottom left of the "Install Now" window and the standard system recovery options will appear.

For example I have added dism++ to this one, the others are the standard "system recovery options" which you can get at from the installation media by selecting "repair my computer"




You could also "create a system repair disc" from within a running windows installation by typing recdisc in start search box. It includes the same system recovery options, but unlike the installation media - it does not include the installation files and it does not support efi boot.






If you are talking about a "repair install", that can only be done from within a running operating system and requires the full installation media

 

[Gorlash]

Okay, here's how I finally dealt with this.
Essentially, the solutions suggested here appeared to be just as complex as the original method that I first used for this update, so I just repeated that.
That means I deleted/re-partitioned the new drive, cloned my existing W7HP hdd to the new SSD (using AOMEI Backupper Pro), booted to new drive, ran the Windows Anytime Upgrade which I got from eBay, and that was that.

The AOMEI cloning operation takes about 3-4 hours, but it is a 'start it and walk away' operation, and it Just Works (tm).

My only concern was whether I would have any problem using the MS product key for the Anytime Upgrade a second time, but it was no problem at all.

Thank you all for your advice and suggestions; even though I went with a different method, reading all of these discussions made me more aware of the process that I was going through, as well as presenting options in the future, if needed.

Thank you all very much !!

 

[Megahertz07]

To do a clean install using a upgrade license you don't need to install HB or HP then upgrade.
Get a Win 7 SP1 installation disk or iso. Delete the ei.cfg to make it universal (HB, HP, Pro and Ultimate).
When installing, select Pro and when asked, insert the upgrade key.

 

[SIW2]

Been through the ei.cfg delete explanation already.

Quote: Originally Posted by SIW2
If you have a win7 dvd/iso file which includes SP1, you can easily change it to all editions media.

You can't delete the sources\ei.cfg file directly from a dvd, so create an iso from the dvd using something like gburner ( which is a fully functional trial for 30 days). Then delete the ei.cfg from the new iso. Then burn the new iso to dvd/bootable usb stick.

 

[Megahertz07]

SIW2, I've seen your nice explanation on how to create the universal Win 7 SP1 installation disk.

My intention was to clarify that you can use the upgrade key to directly install without the need to have a previous version on the disk.

 

[Gorlash]

To do a clean install using a upgrade license you don't need to install HB or HP then upgrade.
Get a Win 7 SP1 installation disk or iso. Delete the ei.cfg to make it universal (HB, HP, Pro and Ultimate).
When installing, select Pro and when asked, insert the upgrade key.

A core issue for me here, was that I did *not* want to do a clean install; I have 7 years of history on this machine, I *really* didn't want to flush it all!! I just wanted to upgrade to Win7 Pro so I could access the 32GB of RAM that I already had installed in the machine !!