No, I'm not complaining about the links offered here or any other advice given by the contributors to this site. Since I am the one who has the live with the consequences, I want to know for myself why people are trusting these links.
Also the latest recommended iso's are not on a digital river site.
MS announced they don't put backdoors in, so you should be ok.I would just be worried that there would be some kind of undetectable backdoor in there since it would be right in the OS.
If you are really paranoid, you can check the hashes.
Heidoc says the last outage was apparently MS moving win7 and Ofc ISO's off of DR to Azure servers. During these two outages the pages failed to a MS address.
The inquiry is a good one because we also have always been concerned about where safe downloads could be found. Consumers should not be forced to pirates'torrents by those who sold them a product that needs decent reinstall or repair media.
I purchased 2 new PCs, from HP, laptop & Desktop upon retirement..
included was a Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.
After a while, I needed more speed and it appeared the HP OS was bloatware I did not need. But, I had paid Microsoft/HP for my license.
But when I tried to find a "native" copy of Windows, Microsoft wanted me to BUY another license. This made no sense to me as I have my keys.
Microsoft does one thing well, fails to communicate with its customers without asking for money to just talk.
This site allowed me to get a fresh copy of what I had purchased and is totally legal to my knowledge.
This was something I could not do by dealing with HP or Microsoft as all you get is the "company line" and no logic. .
Risky or not, it is a solution better than trying to figure out how to deal with Microsoft as a logical level.
Robert A Heinlein
a hardy, non religious, back slapping, AMEN
Thanks for the responses. I'd never heard of "hashes" before reading SIW2's post, but I from what I gather they amount to a unique identifier for a particular file. I looked into that, and the hashes for the files I need seem to check out. I thought my results might be useful for other users with the same concerns about the files.
1. I downloaded the file X17-58997.iso from the blob.core.windows.net site. This is identified as the W7 Home Premium x64 "with SP1 U (media refresh)" iso.
2. I found information from the MSDN subscription page about W7 downloads: MSDN Subscriber Downloads.
The corresponding file name given there for the same build is en_windows_7_home_premium_with_sp1_x64_dvd_u_676549.iso. The SHA1 hash posted there for this file is 6C9058389C1E2E5122B7C933275F963EDF1C07B9.
3. I got and installed the fciv.exe tool from microsoft and ran the tool on the downloaded file for its sha1 hash.
4. On the first try, I actually got the wrong sha1 hash, so I downloaded the file a second time in case my file was corrupted locally or in the download process. Running the tool on second download produced the correct hash above. (I noticed that the first file was actually a Gig smaller. Something clearly went wrong there.)
5. I also downloaded the older iso from the digitalriver.net site and the hashes did indeed match those posted by a moderator on a microsoft answers discussion board.
If I understand correctly, one can't change even one line of the code in a file without altering its hash value. If that's correct, then this method verifies the files to my satisfaction since the published hashes (and hash calculator) come directly from MS.
Even knowing that these particular files check out, if I were to download these or similar files again, I would definitely check the hashes again (1) to make sure that there hasn't been some corruption locally or in transmission and (2) because these files come from the internet in what seems to me a rather insecure way given what could potentially go wrong. Microsoft supplies the hashes for a reason, and it seems prudent to check them.
Last edited by VegasIP; 12 Jun 2014 at 16:45. Reason: typos
i recently formatted my laptop n intalled a cracked version of ultimate x64. but its now creating me lots of problem. so i just want to know if i can reinstall windows 7 home basics x64 (my factory os which is oem)????? i have downloaded a home premium version of windows and unlocked home basics using suitable tool. so can i use the COA sticker key to activate my os again. bt the key im having is the OEM n the setup is retail. is iy possible to activate retail version with OEM key???? pls help me sumboby.. thanks in advance...
Hello and welcome Sujit mate for starters I would be very careful about talking about cracked versions. The only way to put it on is to use a new OEM disk or the tutorial and use the activation code as Greg has laid out in the tutorial and using the corect version of Windows for the ISO - a lot of people think they can get a "higher" version than they bought originally and then wonder why they are not able to get the machine or instal;lation going.
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