mickleoe

August 01, 2011 at 12:54pm

i know i can get leads for hard drives, and external hard drives, but my friend had a dell inspiron 530 dual core 2 gig ram win vista lying in the shed, Thinking i was clever i went straight to bios told it to boot from rom with my win7 disk in which i have used 4 times now. when it boots up it asks f1 cont or f2 boot menu, unfortunately i have installed win 7 twice because of this option so when i do press f1 i have 2 win 7 options . if i pick the 1st win 7 option i get the illegal desktop warning, if i pick the second win 7 the one i didnt set the proper clock time to,(the only difference in installation and maybe password) it starts perfect no warnings. If anybody responds to me i will be gobsmacked and if you do i know you will say just buy an external hard drive lol i just like messing with comps. Thanx neways if you read me.

cappomutato

May 19, 2011 at 7:36pm

A year and a half later, this was a life saver.  New video card; BSOD on start.  The usual fixes weren't working (last good config, safe mode, removing unnecessary hardware, linux utils, install DVD "repair") so I went for the last resort, complete re-install.  That failed.  WTF?  Oh yeah... I finally remember that Win 7 doesn't like a certain pair of striped drives hanging around.  Unplug 2 SATA cables which fixes it but the damage is already done, my boot disk is blank from the failed re-install.  Try to recover the data or just go ahead and finish the reinstall?  Screw it: reinstall.  Oh crap, key isn't "valid" for this type of install... well, you know the rest.  Glad it hasn't been patched shut.

kbr88

March 12, 2011 at 8:55am

for some reason, i followed all of the steps and after i entered slmgr /rearm i received the following error:

on a computer run microsoft windows non-core edition run slui.exe0x2a0xc004D302 to display error text. Error 0xC004d302

I am trying to install windows 7 home premium upgrade on a brand new hard disk (having removed old HD that had windows xp).

i have doublecbecked registry and all changes are corrrect. i have tried a couple more times and i get the same error.

has microsoft changed something that means this workaround is no longer effective? or have i dont something wrong?

any suggestions

thanks

 

GeoMarine

March 11, 2011 at 5:40am

So from what I can tell, everything that was done was using CMD and the Start bar and what not. I'm just looking into building my new PC, but I was thinking. Surely you won't have the Start bar or CMD if you've got no OS installed?

Please help!

HiroProtaganist

January 07, 2011 at 11:49am

I was using a family pack update. 2 machines updated without a hitch, but 3rd ended up needing a blank install. This worked like a charm. Thanks for saving me the headaches of having to deal with MS. Much, much appreciated.

xoannieox999

November 01, 2010 at 4:56pm

Worked like a charm!  Had to do a fresh install of Windows 7 on a computer that had Vista on it.  After trying to use my Vista recovery discs to no avail, I had no choice but to wipe the hard drive and get a copy of Windows 7 (heck, I figured why not upgrade while I'm at it..geez.)  Anyways-after being unable to use the key that came with the windows 7 disc to activate, your tips worked wonderfully and I am now feeling much much better.

BigEffingDeal

October 17, 2010 at 5:07pm

Thank you sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much for this!!!! I LOVE YOU  MaxPC!! I love you!!!!

Worked like a charm.

W00t!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

PS: YES, MS shoiuld have used the honor system, but that would have been to logical, and MS is ANYTHING but logical.

Thanks for saving the day Max PC!!!

dswluthier

February 10, 2010 at 9:25pm

I had my Vista Home Premium 64 bit installation on one of two identical HD's. The second drive was freshly formatted. I phoned Microsoft about installing my upgrade onto the blank drive and their tech walked me right through the installation over the phone. He stayed on and helped me with all of it. All we had to do after the install was go to cmd and use the rearm command and then put in the key code. It's worked perfectly ever since. He even provided emailed instructions including the registry hack if it had been needed.

Also I bought the 3 computer upgrade package of Windows 7 Home Premium on Amazon for $135.00, that's $45.00 per install! Cheap!

da_samman

November 24, 2009 at 1:00pm

What about us XP lovers?  Is there a similar procedure for XP Professional?

Sincerely yours, from Fort Lewis, WA

SGT Samuel E. McClard II

Life's a journey, enjoy the ride!!

shokwaav

November 23, 2009 at 10:47am

can i use my upgrade disk to do a clean install like this? I want to move my vista installation to 'windows.old'

SteveSBE

November 14, 2009 at 5:01am

THANK YOU! This was greatly apprceciated. You lowered my blood pressure 10s (if not 100s) of points. Microsoft deserves their money and protection but I deserve the time back I spent on this issue...unnecessarily.

I FULLY agree that its rather underhanded to allow users to install without a product key, fine tune their systems, then not allow them to activate, with no phone number to call. This also happened to me and I spent my valuable time doing what Microsoft said was a simple short excercise.WHY CAN'T THEY PUT THIS FACT IN BIG BIG LETTERS so you see it before spending 3-4 hours upgrading only to find you "need" to start again.

I will seriously consider Macintosh the next time. I spend far far far far few hours "maintaining" my Mac than I do my PC. I was hoping for better in Windows 7 but it looks like the same old story.

Thanks again.

Steve

FascistNation

November 09, 2009 at 4:40pm

I think I will wait for SP2.  ;-)

 

Freedom's the Answer.
What's the Question?

cubesteak

November 08, 2009 at 1:09am

Doesn't if figure that MS would take something as good as Win7 and FRACK IT UP with stupidity like this. I swear they GOAD people into pirating their stuff with this kind of crap.

Oh, and CrashTECH - Get off your high horse and realize that the people who want to pirate Win7 wouldn't be complaining in this board about ACTIVATING it. DUH.   No - people are pissed that MS penalizes the PAYING customer by adding in this bass-ackwards install step making things take twice as long.

I buy my software - I have more licensed copies of several versions of Windows laying around than I know what to do with.  I was hoping to use Win7 for many years to come, but I don't want to sign up for double installing OS's simply because MS puts a lame ass attempt at stemming piracy.  Yeah, like this will help deter the pirates.  PLEASE.  The only thing it does is piss off the honest people and make them want to BE pirates.  I'd imagine several people will end up buying a legal copy and then using a pirated installer simply because its easier.  They might as well name this Windows 7 CS by Adobe..

I don't know why I expect more from MS, I really should know better by now. 

mkarias1

November 07, 2009 at 1:51pm

I couldn't do a clean install my Upgrade W7 disc on a new HD.  It did work with the registry hack.  (I had XP but it was on another HD.)

Riskjudge911

November 05, 2009 at 11:13am

I have the retail version but my friend got the Upgrade Home Premium. He wiped his hard drive, then installed Windows 7 Upgrade Home Premium..then after installation was done he rebooted and re-installed Windows 7 over the previous installation that he just installed. This fooled the system into thinking it had a previous OS. Then he activated it and boom no problems at all. So if you don't want to rename anything or mess with the registry this method works too. (Although takes a bit more time).

Dies

October 27, 2009 at 11:08pm

Totally works

 Formated my raptor drive then dropped in the Upgrade CD i recieved today and done the install procedure.  Got into windows first thing i did was make a windows.old folder and then went onto activation and it worked.

Ive got legit  keys for XP anywhos so doesnt really matter to me but one less step is nice.

mkarias1

October 27, 2009 at 3:42pm

Another site initially posted part of this back on the 22nd.  Last update was 25th.

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp

arkweld

October 27, 2009 at 2:54pm

there's a pretty simple way to upgrade software that many other software retailers use but MS didn't. Just don't supply new registration numbers with upgrade packs and get the user to enter the existing serial number for their previous OS.

MS could even have used the disk check method during install and that would have saved time.

sammyd253

October 27, 2009 at 2:25pm

Someone probably already posted this, but...

 I purchased a retail copy of Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade from Best Buy.  I threw the 64-bit copy in my dvd-rom, booted my PC from that drive, formatted my drive and chose to install there.  Once setup prompted me for my product key, I didn't enter it.  Setup finishes and you'll eventually boot into your freshly installed OS.  Install your drivers, and install ALL Windows Updates.  Run Windows Updates and reboot until you can't get new updates.  Then activate your copy of Windows using your product key.  It should go through no problem.  If it doesn't, then you have to move onto the registry hack method.

 Either way, you can avoid having to install a previous version of the OS first.

 Hope this helps!  And if someone already posted this, my bad.

HokieTechie

October 27, 2009 at 1:20pm

This "you have a copy of XP, so you are fine" argument only works for your first Windows 7 install.

 In the course of my legitimate ownership of a Windows XP Upgrade (from a legal copy of Windows 98), I have done a fresh reinstall because of a hard drive failure, a fresh reinstall because of a motherboard upgrade, and a fresh reinstall just because I built up to much runtime crap over the course of several years of normal use. Each of these actions is perfectly legit under the non-OEM license.

Microsoft's new "you must install and activate and install XP first" would have added a large amount of pointless effort to each of these steps. And, one day, if I upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows whatever, does Microsoft expect me to install 3 operating systems?

Someone in Redmond just isn't thinking ahead about all the ways that their product is (legally) used.

 

DoctorX

October 27, 2009 at 1:14pm

Why are you harping on the upgrade having to have a valid OS?  Almost everyone here does.  But most like me do not want any garbage from the old install on the new install.  Clean install is still the best way.

 Have a little consideration dude!

badfrog

October 27, 2009 at 11:48am

on my main machine I had the RTM build installed, and was able to use the upgrade version to install without issue.  and that wasn't not a validated/activated prior install.

 if needed, I could have reinstalled XP and activated it, but I am glad I didn't have to sit through two OS installs. 

sotoa

October 27, 2009 at 10:40am

Win7 Pro is sitting in the unopened box until my SSD 160GB Intel arrives.  This baby is getting a FRESH install.  Was waiting for prices to drop, TRIM to be available and Intel to add the TRIM firmware. 

So why should I install Vista, activate, then install Win7?  I want as little garbage on my SSD as possible.  The MOST hoops they should do is ask for the old DVD as verification or something.  Why be treated like a criminal?

 I'm going to try these tricks first.

CrashTECH

October 27, 2009 at 8:56am

If you don't have a valid license for a prior OS, it serves you right for trying to get it cheap by cheating and getting an upgrade license. It is called an upgrade because you are UPGRADING from prior version. You don't have a prior version you say? Oh, tough luck, go buy the retail version and stop whining because MS punished you for not abiding by the terms of the EULA.

jcollins

October 27, 2009 at 7:26am

Man, wtf, it's a pain that they fail it AFTER you've possibly done your hours of install and wasted your time.

Pyrophorics

October 27, 2009 at 7:03am

Hrm, guess I got lucky. I just installed Windows 7 on three computers this weekend with the home premium family pack upgrade and on two of the computers I deleted the partitions and formatted then proceeded to install. I activated all my copies yesterday with one day left to do so.

HokieTechie

October 27, 2009 at 6:49am

Personally, I canceled my pre-order of Office 7 Progessional Upgrade
when I read about this "cannot do a clean install" nonsense, and I will
continue to run XP into the indefinite future. Microsoft really screwed
the paying customer on this one.

I am glad to see that the hack
is easy to explain and to execute. I hope Microsoft has the good sense
to see their mistake and not to try to nerf this in a WGA update or in
Windows 7 SP 1.

 

Wonko33

October 27, 2009 at 6:43am

I think they just don't mind that people do it. I mean you paid for the product, and really who doesn't have win vista or XP right now? (You could say Mac people but I am talking about people with computers).

 And even if someone doesn't have a previous version of windows, well that's a new "convert" so who cares. It's not like we didn't pay for Win 7 when we do this.

 

It really is win-win to let us do that, they just have a different official policy.

keithfreitag

October 27, 2009 at 5:36am

I would've posted that myself but I figured I might get in trouble from Microsoft.  Those are the steps they walked me through when I custom upgraded (clean install) over XP to 7 Home Prem Family Pack.  I just explained that MS says for XP users to do a custom install to a clean drive and then restore all programs and files.  So when it didn't work, MS is responsible for the fix.  Had I know it was OK to post those steps, I would've done it last week and saved some headaches. 

Steve Jobs is the Devil and Windows 7 wasn't his idea!

Keith

allantang

October 27, 2009 at 2:14am

I was running Win7 RC1 and did a full clean install with the upgrade dvd, doing the double install.

I first booted from the dvd and formated the drive through the installer, then installed, all using the custom installer. I did not enter they key during the install, it will of course say that it is an upgrade key...

Once the install was finished and windows is loaded, I opened the dvd from windows, ran the installer again, and did the upgrade install option.

Once everything was finished I entered my key and windows was activated, no problem. I have done this with pro and home premium.

Now that I think of it though I did not use the actual upgrade dvd. I used the technet dvds downloaded from microsoft... but still worked with my upgrade key doing this process. 

K0BALT

October 26, 2009 at 11:14pm

I did my Windows 7 Ultimate install right over Vista so I can use my Vista key for another build... btw, it was the system builders version of Vista, not a Dell retail.

jimmynemo2

October 26, 2009 at 8:24pm

so I'd read these same tips on other sites, but when i tried them on a particular PC, they didnt work. So on a long shot I tried something that I've now repeated and verified on 4 PC's since:

 

Just install a clean install, Dont enter any Key when asked. Then, once you are read y to activate, create a folder called Windows.old on the root of your C: drive, then activate with your key just like normal. I know, it sounds too simple, and that it's too big a loophole for them to have missed, but it's worked for me 4 times now and my machines are on a retail upgrade disc and key.

 

Hope this helps someone.