How to get the Windows 7 Public Beta
Posted 01/10/09 at 12:26:29 PM by Justin Kerr
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Ever since the Windows 7 public beta went live yesterday, Microsoft servers have been buckling under the demand. The much coveted ISO files and CD keys have had somewhat sporadic availability, but as always can be had if you know where to look. Luckily for you, we’ve kicked over every stone to bring you everything you’ll need to get started.
I recommend when surfing through the links that you fire up Internet Explorer, as you will likely run into the same problems I did using Firefox or Chrome. If you manage to use the official beta site in fact, you will require an IE specific ActiveX control to be installed. So if you’re looking for a copy of Windows 7, and are ready to begin, follow along below.
Step #1 – Get Yourself a Beta Key
- The steps were detailed in a blog entry which allows you to access key’s via http://technet.microsoft.com . Simply follow the link and log in using the sign in option in the top right corner. It will ask you for your tech net user name and password, but I was successfully able to do this using my Windows Live ID.
- Next simply copy and paste the following link into your active window
Windows 7 32-Bit Key: https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/scripts/gcs.aspx?Product=tn-win7-32-ww&LCID=1033
Windows 7 64-Bit Key: https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/scripts/gcs.aspx?Product=tn-win7-64-ww&LCID=1033
- Finally, just copy down the CD key for use during installation.
Step #2 – Download The Beta
- The official download site seems to come and go, but here are some deep links to the file which seem to be working even through the disruption.
Windows 7 32-Bit Beta Download
Windows 7 64-Bit Beta Download
Remember to back up your data before giving this a try and it’s probably not best to run this on your primary machine. The beta key’s are supposedly valid until August 2009 and should give you a good preview of what is to come.
Let us know what your impressions are of Windows 7.
i copied and pasted the
Submitted by streetking on Sat, 02/21/2009 - 5:44pm
i copied and pasted the website to get the 64-bit product key, and it redirected me to the homepage... help?
Submitted by jyang772 on Fri, 01/23/2009 - 2:35pm
I downloaded Windows 7 iso. and used DaimonLite to mount the image on a virtual drive. Then I installed Windows 7 without rebooting the computer and burning iso. on disc. saves time i guess.
Submitted by jyang772 on Tue, 01/20/2009 - 8:04pm
I couldn't access the download page with Google Chrome so I used Mozilla Firefox instead.
Anyone else have the same problem?
Submitted by jyang772 on Tue, 01/20/2009 - 4:38pm
When I try to go to the download page it shows it's loading, but when I go to a different tab it stops. I waited for 30 min. and its still loading.
Can anyone help?
Submitted by kostol235 on Mon, 01/19/2009 - 9:02am
I got a 64-bit beta key, burned the iso file to a DVD, and everything went smoothly. However, when I try to install Win 7 by booting from the DVD, it doesn't go to the install screen, it just goes to the default Win 7 background, gives me a cursor that I can move around, and thats it. It's like its booting the full OS even though I have not installed it yet. And by the way, I am using only one blank hard drive when I try to install it (I disconnect my Vista boot drive). I'm sure someone here knows whats going on, or what I'm doing wrong, so please help me
Submitted by dstevens on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 12:58pm
Kudos to MS for going about it the right way for a change.
Can you imagine how much better the launch of Vista would have been if MS had done this officaly three years ago instead of how they did handle it?
Beta.
Across the internet people are defending this OS simply cause its in a "beta" stage. And how can you attack a peice of software much less an OS thats in beta?
I think MS should make this annnouncement slightly more public. Let more people in on it while they can claim OS noob status of beta. Wouldnt that clear out alot of problems?
But if they did that and everyone got comfortable with it cause it started working well and then suddenly expires forcing you to buy it to maintain your stability and speed, or going back to Vista.
Now that may not be such a bad thing for everyone w ho thinks vista is ok, and those that dont see such gains in windows 7 over Vista.
But for those that claim endless instability and slow performance over XP (and likely to be 7), well they wont be so happy about doing that.
Windows 7 seems to be a stable OS with alot of issues adressed stemming from windows Vista.
UAC, Network performance, Device detection upon install, UAC, Aero, Video playback, and alot more.
The guy that was sitting in the meeting that came up with the idea to open beta 7 instead of pre-release it as they did with Vista is likely sitting in a bigger office now.
Submitted by Nogoodname on Sat, 01/17/2009 - 12:40pm
I agree with you on that the guy who made this beta open got a better office and a raise if possible.
Win7 runs just a bit sluggish on 512 MB, with 128 MB used by the integrated graphics chip (this is my parents computer not mine, so please don't flame me). They might as well lower the minimum requirement specs. I can only congratulate the Win7 development team for what they achived.
Submitted by dstevens on Tue, 01/20/2009 - 8:51am
what r the rest of the specs on the parents laptop?
id like to know how low end of a machine can run 7
Submitted by Nogoodname on Tue, 01/20/2009 - 11:48am
it's not a laptop but a desktop computer
since it is an OEM machine this link can probably help you better on what specs it has
http://www.emachines.com/products/products.html?prod=T6216
if the link doesn't work just copy&paste it.
Submitted by jloberle on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 1:19pm
Is anyone else having a proble with the nic in vmware?
Submitted by teh 1337 haxxor on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 8:42pm
What vmware app are you using? In Sun xVM Virtual Box, which is what I am using, I went to settings and set the network adapter to "Intel PRO/1000MT Desktop (NAT)". It works fine for me now.
Submitted by dmackey828 on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 7:11pm
I am having a problem with it finding my NIC on my REGULAR computer, I even tried a copy of the XP Pro drivers for my NIC. Still a No go... Pissing me off. Everything else worked fine. I NEED my NIC!!! Argh!!
Submitted by syquest1 on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 8:27am
Other than a couple of crashes (which I expect with Beta testing) I am very impressed with and like Windows 7. I like pretty much everything I am seeing thus far. I am running it with an Intel Core i7 processor and 3 GB of DDR3 RAM and it is very fluid and stable. Boots up and shuts down in less than 30 seconds. Plays Fallout 3 superbly. I can't wait for the finished product. I know its early but I think Microsoft may have finally gotten it right this time.
Is anyone having an
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 01/12/2009 - 4:56pm
Is anyone having an unusually slow time downloading via bittorrent in Windows 7 64bit? I'm running the latest Utorrent client and the download and upload speeds are terribly slow. I sent a feedback on this already.
Very nice!
Submitted by Homer2029 on Mon, 01/12/2009 - 7:18am
To me Windows 7 is very very impressive, I've been running Vista Ultimate for about a year now, and even after a clean install 7 loads to the desktop twice as fast as Vista. Love the new notification area... my only beef with 7 is, where's the third party firewall support? I tried a couple and they either choked on the install or bsod'd... oh well, I guess that's why the call it a beta!
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 01/12/2009 - 4:53pm
I remember with Vista we had to wait months after it's release befor there was a true Antivirus program available. There was only one for the longest time and MS was good enough to point that one AV program out. I think it was Avast or something like that. I'm surprised that Norton IS 2009 works as good as it does. As I said I made an Upgrade install over from Visa Ultimate 64.
Submitted by wolf17 on Wed, 01/14/2009 - 4:12pm
Hey Keith, I think the free program MS recommended was AVG.. but I had problems running it (it worked well with vista thou), so I tried Avast and it's working fine (so far anyways).
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Sat, 01/17/2009 - 12:25am
Great Memory.....
As I said I'm enjoying the heck out of the newly minted Norton Internet Security 2009. It definately deserves the Kick Ass award Paul Lilly gave it in the January MPC magazine article. It's the fastest AV full on in depth scanner I've ever used. It's also extremely light on resorces lighter than any free AV program I've ever used.
I digress.. I started having problems running games and I think it's because I did an upgrade install. So I wiped my HDD and reinstalled Vista Ultimate 64 and am awaiting another hdd from newegg.com as well as a shiny new EVGA Geforce GTX280 video card. On Newegg the 280 is only $40bucks more expensive than the 260. So I'm excited to be doing away with my 640mb 8800GTS's in SLI.
Comodo
Submitted by dankers on Mon, 01/12/2009 - 3:18pm
I've been using Comodo free firewall and it works just fine for me... doesn't accuratly detect when some programs are using network though. For example I fired up my Last.FM player and it worked fine even wih no pop-up asking if it was okay to access the internet. As soon as I shut her down Comodo asked if it was okay which i thought was odd. Here and there I find quirks in 7 but I keep sending feedback in the hopes that all will be well upon launch.
Submitted by Remy L on Mon, 01/12/2009 - 5:07am
Has been restored to an extent. I have had Windows 7 up and running on my server pc for about 3 days now and i have had no complaints. This is just as everyone has been saying...."this is the OS that Vista was suppose to be". I agree.
Now mind you there are still some small minor things to point out. But as long as people follow the system requirements, they should be fine. Also, the (new?) networking will take a few mins to figure out. Not as easy as running the setup wizard, but not as hard as people make it out to be either.
All in all, if Microsoft stays to what's in the beta, Windows 7 has a good chance of fixing the Vista Dabacle.
System Specs:
Server PC
AMD Athlon X2 4200+
4GB RAM (512MB for Video)
Total Storage: 5.7TB (non-RAID)
OS: Windows 7 64-bit
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 11:45pm
May I suggest that when you find a feature you like or are just impressed send a feed back. I've already sent about five of them to show my appreciation and to improve their morale. If they get alot of feedback praising them they'll be compelled to provide us with an even more awsome OS then they already have done here. I mean Win7 Beta at least for me is more stable than the Final releases of both Win95 and WinXP. Both were buggy an hell when they were released. I can't believe how stable this is.
Agree
Submitted by GreenTurtle on Mon, 01/12/2009 - 5:47am
I've got to agree Keith, I sent feedback back and it was almost all perfect, except for the gadgets, they don't seem to work right. But for the other 99.999% of th OS it's fantastic!! I can't believe how stable it is, even with how agressively OC'd my system is LOL!!!! My two ATI 4870's in crossfire worked right away, and I didn't even have to do anything :)
Submitted by mini6090 on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 8:51pm
For starters... this is what vista should have been, yes, however, be fair and admit that anything they released after XP would have gotten a bad review, they had to make drastic changes and no matter what, the transition was gonna be ugly... now that Vista is being shoved out the door, i'm more than glad to welcome Windows7, even though i'm not crazy about the name... i hated the task bar at first, but it's shown to actually be usable and relatively understandable if you have a decent idea about windows in the first place, the common user should find some decent additions to make things easier or just better looking and more inviting. Gadgets broke on me already, creative sound drivers were a bitch to install, but i saw that coming, nvidia is the bomb because they have drivers already available, the rest of my asus stuff worked easily enough considering it's a beta. i know i'm not supposed to use it as my primary, but as crazy as it sounds, i trust it, plus i have a ghost image of my vista install. Media player is looking way better and much more inviting, i hate itunes. It seems as though they actually thought about things and listened to feedback... i'm very excited for the final release, and if this is any indication of how the future of Microsoft is going to be, we should all be excited, 2 years ago they NEVER would release an OS to the public in ANY way, someone is running things correctly, nice
(hiding taskbar icons near the time is only going to screw stupid users into thinking that nothing is running on there computer, i promise you 6 months down the line, i'll be doing a job working on a customers computer, i'll click on the little arrow up near the time and enough icons will show to cover half the desktop, i promise you)
Altek
Asus P6T
Core i7 920
9gb Corsair Dominator 8-8-8-24
4x10,000RMP raptors (2xStriped Arrays)
EVGA GTX260
Fatl1ty X-Fi
Submitted by wolf17 on Mon, 01/12/2009 - 9:08am
" i'll be doing a job working on a customers computer, i'll click on the little arrow up near the time and enough icons will show to cover half the desktop"
lol, I think you'll be right about that!
Submitted by NAYRhyno on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 11:43am
Netbooks, for one. Atom is 32-bit.
Other than copious amounts of memory and a few optimized apps, 64-bit is still not that big of a deal.
hmmmm.......should i take a
Submitted by nsk chaos on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 10:21am
hmmmm.......should i take a chunk out of my hard drive for the OS or should i run it on a VM?
Submitted by Budgetperson on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 10:11am
So far I love Windows 7, a lot faster than Vista. It has some nice touches as well, although occassionally the duo taskbar gets annoying. The installation was nicer (because they moved some steps to after the main install), but maybe they should've kept the product key for before still, I don't know. Nice that it doesn't force you to recieve your Windows score. Overall I am very impressed, hopefully it will be this way at launch :D. By the way though, is anyone getting Weird HD scores? Win Vista used to rate my hard drive a 5.6, but Win7 Rates it a 3. Is it because it does it based off of space also (I allotted 70 gb to Windows 7). I have this hard drive-http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148316&Tpk=seagate%20320gb .
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 6:15pm
I also got an unusually low 2.9 hdd score until I went into Device Manager To my hdd in Disk drives and checked the second box Turn off windows write cache buffer flushing on the device.
There are two boxes and just make sure both boxes are X'ed.
Then under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers I unchecked the box that says Command Queuing.
Then I reran the test and I got a 5.9 for my HDD with a 5.9 total system score. Not bad for a middle of the road C2DE8400 Penryn based gaming rig. My Vista total System score was 5.7.
Submitted by gjorgji on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 12:02am
Here we go again. It was the same time 2 years ago when the Vista Beta came out. You will be suprised to find out that really under the hood at kernal level Windows 7 is what Vista shuld have been. Basicaly you have vista carnel striped of all the usles crap that is presnet in the actual vista kernel. You are left with kernel wich is able to ran Windows 7 fine even on a netbook. I wuld love to see teh audio driver architecture improved in 7 as of now it still mirors vista WDA. Lets hope that this time Windows 7 will live to become one great OS such as XP wich won for the same resons as Windows 7 might become big. Compatibility I sicsesfuly run a XP server on a 233MHz Pentium 2 with 128MB ram. Lets hopw that 7 lives to the legacy.
Better late than never
Submitted by n0ctis on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 5:03pm
"Windows 7 is what Vista shuld have been"
That's what the excitement is about.
Submitted by Cyberdiver on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 7:50am
I hope they do away with allt his legacy crap. Everynow and then you need to cut the ties to old crap. Let this be the OS to do it.
Submitted by dankers on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 7:07am
Why would they make new operating systems for old hardware?
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Sat, 01/10/2009 - 10:56pm
Will is there anyway you can optimize mpc.com for internet explorer 8 because the site doesn't display right in IE8 and people like me just installed Win7 and so far all I know is IE8 is all that works so far. Going to try FireFox.
I doubt they will spend much
Submitted by Justin.Kerr on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 1:47pm
I doubt they will spend much time trying to optomize for IE8 until it moves from beta to release candidate. So much can change between now and then. IE 8 oboviously needs more work not MPC :)
Submitted by nduanetesh on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 8:18pm
Chrome also runs like the wind on Win7. The more I use Chrome, the more I like it.
Win7 isn't all that bad, either.
Submitted by canbbb on Sat, 01/10/2009 - 10:50pm
My first Win7 install was on my old P4 on a Asus P4G8X mobo. Flawless installation, and works really fast (it has a good enough graphics: ATI 2600). Still two problems: I was not able to load the mobo drivers for Win7 to recognize the on board LAN. I tried Asus (which do't even have Vista drivers for this mobo), and then I tried Broadcom themselves, makers of the lan chip. No luck.
For my second attempt, I am now attempting to load Win7 in Virtual PC 2007 (SP1). Install works very well so far.
[EDIT] made it work, so far quite well, on Virtual PC 2007. I've allocated 2 Gb RAM to the VPC (I have 6 total). Graphics are disapointing, but that's the fault of the virtualization, not of Win7. Install worked, LAN is working, etc. And quite fast too. This second attempt is on my main machine, a Core i7 with plenty of goodies.
Submitted by Justin.Kerr on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 7:24am
I havn't had any luck getting sound to work under VPC2007.
Anyone else found a workaround yet?
Submitted by swessie on Sat, 01/10/2009 - 9:58pm
I would move to the 64-bit version, and dual boot with Vista, without question. Been rock solid since release 6801. Very nice, I like.
Submitted by ubuwalker31 on Sat, 01/10/2009 - 9:17pm
Don't bother with these instructions. Microsoft changed the downloading process. All you have to do is open up Internet Explorer, since you need ActiveX, and navigate to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx -- then just follow the instructions...login to your hotmail account...and then download...wait an hour or two...and tada, you have the .iso.
Plus, there is really good news The initial 2.5 million LIMIT on the public beta HAS BEEN REMOVED for the next two weeks (thru January 24th). During that time you will have access to the beta even if the download number exceeds the 2.5 million unit limit. W00t.
I am very impressed with Windows 7 -- it seems much better than Vista so far.
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Sat, 01/10/2009 - 9:14pm
Just go here and get Win7 Beta the old fashioned way along with a pretty Product Key without any need for unnecessary technical stuff... Here is the URL for the official Beta page. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx
I'm using Windows 7 exclusively I used the upgrade option from Windows Vista 64 and it brought all my programs over nicely. It's a good deal. It did take about an Hour or so to install because it had to bring all my programs over but it was worth it.
Also Google Chrome wont load and It wont let me reinstall. Doh..
Submitted by musicman172001 on Sat, 01/10/2009 - 8:43pm
This week I plan on purchasing an additional hard drive for my laptop so I can install the beta and dual-boot with XP. In the meantime I've installed it on a virtual machine and I'm even surprised at how speedy it is in that environment. I haven't really used Vista that much but from what I have used, Windows 7 is very similar with several great differences.
I played around with Windows 7 all afternoon and so far I'm very impressed. I like it. If they can end up with a very stable product and the next few months prove to be fruitful in its use, I might actually consider purchasing it as an upgrade. It will definitely be going onto my new desktop I plan on building in another year and a half.
Submitted by dankers on Sat, 01/10/2009 - 7:35pm
Use your MSN addy and pass. It's exclusive to anyone with an internet connection.
Submitted by worm8199 on Sat, 01/10/2009 - 7:00pm
I don't have a technet account so I obviously couldn't login. I did try pasting the web address for the 32-bit key in the address bar and low and behold it gave me a key! Yay me!
Submitted by wicked72 on Sat, 01/10/2009 - 6:39pm
ok you have to login Step 1 : Logon to http://technet.microsoft.com (click on Sign in in the upper right corner)
I didnt have an account
You don't need to create a
Submitted by BAMT on Mon, 01/12/2009 - 3:11pm
You don't need to create a TechNet account; use a Hotmail.com email account. If you don't have one, get one at mail.live.com.
Hey Einstein, create one!
Submitted by kleinkinstein on Sat, 01/10/2009 - 6:53pm
Hey Einstein, create one!
Submitted by kleinkinstein on Sat, 01/10/2009 - 3:14pm
Old news! For the latest, http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=87766&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
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