Activation Key Question

I have Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Ultimate Upgrade.

I was wondering if it would be possible to use the Ultimate Upgrade 7 key to activate a Ultimate SP1 RTM to skip having to install the Home Premium I have, then update, then upgrade to Ultimate, then update again. In other words, to skip all the middlemen BS in-between on a Clean Install (and with a SP1 version, I only have the base disks right now - no SP1, and slipstream attempts have failed).

I know for a fact there is a way to do it with just the Ultimate Upgrade and key without even bothering with any other OS installed (blank drive, and using CMD) but I'd rather do it the legit way, with an SP1 Ultimate installer disk instead.

Not trying to do anything illegal here, I do own licenses to both I just want a way to preform a true Clean Install off of these and which will shave off considerable hours by doing it the way I said and just wanted to know if its possible before potentially wasting a burnable DVD trying.

Thank you for any and all assistance in this matter. I'm wanting to do this ASAP as system is now officially, extremely unstable (frequent BSOD's, mishandled exception errors evidently related to some kind of memory corruption going on - and other issues). So time is of the essence.

Thank you both so much, you've just saved me at least several hours. Bravo!

And I will definitely have to try out that USB method in the future (I've had some serious issues with the disks in the past - data totally just up and disappearing off of them after a while), just as soon as I secure one larger than 2GB... how I wish my Sims 3 collector's flash drive was 4GB. That would be perfect, unmistakable what it is lol.

After I'm done doing this and restoring some things, I think I'll try my first attempt at a custom image restore too. I've been too afraid to try it but I'm tired of having to turn around and keep doing this monumental undertaking every time this thing decides to throw a tantrum over something.



But that's for another thread, I think.

Awesome, good to know and thanks again. I just hope this Clean Install and subsequent driver updates (been using a old 2009 GPU driver seeing as OEM won't release an updated one tailored to it ) solves the issues or I'm in big trouble...

Will do, I'll definitely be back with the status. I might not be able to get it done today, but definitely very soon. Just have to double-check my archived files to be sure everything's there before I wipe out the primary for this (and there are a LOT of them lol).

NoelDP said:

If you've been using Windows Live Mail, make sure that you've backed up the data from the message folders - it's not in the *sensible* place!.

Nah, I don't really use email or similar types of things anymore but when I have too, it is Hotmail/Live. Though, I will admit I'm tired of this integrating everything into everything else nonsense that's been going on with all of them these days... it's just not cool.

Thanks for the warning though, I appreciate it!

UPDATE: Worked like a charm for me, I did not even have to perform the workarounds. Just burned the appropriate .ISO (Ultimate SP1 x64), changed boot order, rebooted and followed instructions (deleting the single partition before continuing - never had to do that with the factory restore process but simple enough) and let it reinstall. Took my key after the install and during activation with no complaints whatsoever.

AWESOME!

Golden, Brink - I'd rep you both again if I could. Thank you guys so much again. Instead of dealing with hundreds of updates and several hours of restarts to do that over and over again (there's only 80 of them - TGFT), and cutting out the "upgrade" in place install as well, you've truly saved me hours and hours of time.

My hat's off to you!