This one describes the little trick with which I could upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 with an upgrade license and nevertheless doing a clean install. I don't need to mention that you can do this only legally if you own a valid Windows XP license (I don't know if this is working for Vista too, but it should).
When getting my hands on a Windows 7 upgrade license a while ago I didn't know how much trouble it would be to upgrade my Windows XP SP3. After purchasing the license I was able to download my Windows 7 upgrade media. I was surprised that this was not a bootable iso-file. Instead I got two box-files and one exe-file, which when started simply extracts the box-files onto my harddisk into a folder named expandedSetup. In this folder I found five folders (boot, efi, sources, support and upgrade) and four files (autorun.inf, bootmgr, bootmgr.exe and setup.exe). Looks like a DVD structure, doesn't it?
Normally the upgrade policy from Microsoft wants people to start the upgrade process by starting the setup.exe out of a running Windows session. But this was inherently impossible because I wanted to upgrade from a 32bit Windows XP to a 64bit Windows 7. The setup.exe simply wouldn't start because it doesn't support the 32bit platform (actually it brought an error message). I read that this issue is now solved by Mircosoft and they now let you download an iso-file. Thank you ba******.
But I had these files on my laptop now. So what did I do? First I made a bootable iso out of the expandedSetup folder. Therefor I needed a valid Vista or Windows 7 bootable media from which I extracted the BootImage. I used the "Windows 7 RC - iso" which I could download legally from the Mircosoft servers last year. If you ask the unholy G. for it you will definitly find a description of how to get you hands onto a working BootImage and how to burn it together with the expandedSetup folder onto a DVD (Didn't I tell you it looks like a DVD?! ;-)).The fun part started when I finally had my bootable Windows 7 media.
The thing is that all Windows 7 install medias are mostly the same and only the product key which you enter during installation holds the information about the license. The trick was that I didn't gave the product key during the installation I just finished it without it. After the installation was finished and I logged in for the first time I had 30 days to activate my Windows 7. When I had logged in I opened the registry editor with typing regedit into the search field of the start menu and pressed ENTER. There I looked for the key
Normally the upgrade policy from Microsoft wants people to start the upgrade process by starting the setup.exe out of a running Windows session. But this was inherently impossible because I wanted to upgrade from a 32bit Windows XP to a 64bit Windows 7. The setup.exe simply wouldn't start because it doesn't support the 32bit platform (actually it brought an error message). I read that this issue is now solved by Mircosoft and they now let you download an iso-file. Thank you ba******.
But I had these files on my laptop now. So what did I do? First I made a bootable iso out of the expandedSetup folder. Therefor I needed a valid Vista or Windows 7 bootable media from which I extracted the BootImage. I used the "Windows 7 RC - iso" which I could download legally from the Mircosoft servers last year. If you ask the unholy G. for it you will definitly find a description of how to get you hands onto a working BootImage and how to burn it together with the expandedSetup folder onto a DVD (Didn't I tell you it looks like a DVD?! ;-)).The fun part started when I finally had my bootable Windows 7 media.
The thing is that all Windows 7 install medias are mostly the same and only the product key which you enter during installation holds the information about the license. The trick was that I didn't gave the product key during the installation I just finished it without it. After the installation was finished and I logged in for the first time I had 30 days to activate my Windows 7. When I had logged in I opened the registry editor with typing regedit into the search field of the start menu and pressed ENTER. There I looked for the key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE
There I set the entry
MediaBootInstall to 0.
After that I reset the license status of Windows 7. I typed cmd into the search field of the start menu and confirmed with pressing Ctrl+Shift+ENTER and klicked OK on the appearing UAC window.
This just opened me a command prompt with administrative privileges. There I typed
This just opened me a command prompt with administrative privileges. There I typed
slmgr -rearm
And I was done.
Again. This works and should only be done with legal copies and valid licenses of Windows XP and Windows 7.
cheers
cheers
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