It’s a good thing I didn’t rely on solely on Paul Thurrott’s word when deciding to purchase of Windows 7 Home Premium upgrades. If I did, I would have likely gone ahead an cancelled my Amazon.ca pre-orders.
Fortunately, I have several copies of Windows XP lying around because Microsoft clarified the upgrade criteria. It looks like they’ve addressed the loop hole which many took advantage of in the past.
- A qualifying Windows operating system must be installed.
- The qualifying Windows operating system must have a genuine license (product key) and it must be activated.
- To upgrade, boot to the qualifying Windows desktop, insert the Windows 7 Upgrade disc in the DVD drive.
- the setup menu appears, select Custom (advanced) to initiate a clean install procedure.
Paul still believes the Vista upgrade method will work, but I’m not so sure. Not all is lost though: there’s an alternative!
Apparently, you can perform a “Custom Installation” over a Windows 7 Release Candidate install. It’s not a real upgrade, but it will create a “Windows.old” directory which I can delete afterwards. It’s the cleanest method thus far.
My only concern with this method is what would happen if Windows 7 RC expires? Will you still be able to install and activate it for this sole purpose? Hopefully, someone will be able to verify all of this soon.
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