Upgrade from Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 will be possible
Microsoft has yet to announce whether it is possible to upgrade from Windows 7 RC to the final retail version, a question that many have been awaiting an answer for. Dwight Silverman from TechBlog contacted a Microsoft spokesperson, who told him that this will be possible.
If you are running an activated version of Windows 7 RC, you will be able to install Windows 7 from an upgrade disk without installing an older version of Windows. However, you will not be able to do an upgrade installation. Only the custom installation option will be available, which would carry all files on your current Windows installation over to Windows 7 and store it in a folder called windows.old.
Microsoft has continually discouraged upgrade installations from an older Windows 7 build to a newer build. In the RC, the upgrade installation option was disabled if you were running the installation from an older Windows 7 build. However, making a simple edit to the cversion.ini file located on the Windows 7 installation disk would allow you to do so. Microsoft even posted this workaround for those who really wanted to upgrade to the RC from a previous build. The latest RTM candidate build issued to top partners, build 7264, still contains the cversion.ini file, although there is nothing inside. But the fact that the file still exists on the installation image may suggest that this workaround will continue to be possible in the final version of Windows 7.
Even though it will be possible to upgrade, Silverman claims that this could only be done once. If you’ve upgraded from the RC using the Windows 7 upgrade disk and decide to do a clean install of Windows 7 again, you’ll first need to install an older version of Windows.
This last bit of detail doesn’t seem logical at all, since the main purpose of the upgrade disk is to check for an activated version of Windows currently installed on the system before allowing the user to install Windows 7. I’ve contacted a Microsoft spokesperson for additional details and will update if additionals details are provided.
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Tags: rc upgrade, windows 7, windows 7 upgrade
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21 Responses to “Upgrade from Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 will be possible”
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its not possible because it keeps the expire date along with the upgrade. So if you upgrade from the BETA to the RC you’ll have the shutdown every 2hours and then it will deactivate with the same date as the BETA. So same goes with RC to 7
Hmm I was not aware of this.
Well it makes since. The public was only intended to be exposed to the retail build, the build Microsft gets paid for, excluding testers and partners and a few thousand curious people.
That doesn’t exactly add up. I did an upgrade from the beta to the rc, and my computer expires in march 2010, not when the beta expired. So it should be (at least technically) possible to upgrade from the rc to win 7 final an unlimited amount of time.
So if you need to reformat, how would you go about doing that? Say you need to reformat after June 2010, the RC expiration date.
You’ll have to install an older version of windows of course because you are using an upgrade disc. But just what older version can you install? Not Windows 7 RC of course because that’s expired already. What if I had a 32-bit version of vista but a 64-bit version of Windows 7? Now we’re really in trouble. So really it’s not unlimited…you can pretty much upgrade until the June 2010 expiration date.
I guess you won’t be in trouble but if you have 64-bit, do you really want to go back to 32-bit?
I do have one more question…does it have to be build 7100 because I’m on 7201?
Ok i have a question, I upgraded from vista right to windows 7 rc, when windows 7 final comes out can i upgrade to the final retail version without having to reformat?
Microsoft says no but I think you can do it. The next best case scenario is that you do a custom install and everything gets moved to windows.old
so i was running Windows Vista 32 bit and order a package of 64bit which i had to do the reformat then i upgrade to Windows7 64bit RC and check it out no problems at all. It runs smoothly and faster than XP. New improvements on Media Center a lot much sophisticated. But now that means i i buy my upgrade disc which i’ll get a huge discount but i wont be able to upgrade. please some help i dont want to reformat it again with custom installation.
Here’s the deal. If you want to go from RC to final, you must reformat/custom install. If you want to upgrade install, it must be done from Vista which you will have to reinstall, also forcing you to reformat. If you want to go from 32-bit to 64-bit or vice versa (who honestly would?) you have to custom install. Unfortunately reformat/custom install is your only option in any case.
I think an in-place upgrade will be possible since the latest builds still have cversion.ini which seems to be used to do a workaround upgrade install.
In any case, its not recommended at all because it leaves potential for leftover code which you don’t want in a fresh install.
I keep seeing this crap about leftover code everywhere on the net… My question is, WHY would they allow an UPGRADE from XP or Vista straight to Windows 7 RC, and then force me to reinstall around 600 GB of applications and games when moving from Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 RTM? This is ridiculous… although I’m sure our friendly cracking community can come up with some sort of workaround to the expiration dates once the RC expires. Which is good, because I sure as hell am not buying Windows 7 if I have to do a format of my OS drive just to go from Windows 7 to… Windows 7.
I don’t think it’s crap. Would you want junk code left over from an upgrade install? Nope. In fact, doing an upgrade install does junk up your system with quite a bit of crap that you’ll have to delete, especially all those temp files leftover. Now here’s the answer to “why would they allow you to upgrade from Vista to Beta or RC?”. That will be the scenario of lots of people. Microsoft wants you to test to see if the upgrade from Vista to 7 will be stable. This is precisely why they allowed you to upgrade install from those OSes, to test.
Becoming a tester means you should expect to back up and reformat things quite often. That’s part of the testing job. This is why they warned you to back things up and not to use your testing machine as a production machine unless you absolutely know what you are doing.
I understand that there is the risk of things not working quite right or things left over. But if I am willing to try the upgrade, why not allow it? What’s the worst that could happen? I wind up doing a format/reinstall? I guess I just don’t understand why it isn’t even a disclaimered unsupported option for those of us who are testing (although I wouldn’t call using Windows 7 RC testing, everything seems to be rock solid except some slight wonkiness with the Start Menu duplicating entries) the RC.
And as far as backups go… It’s not the documents and such I am worried about. It is the days upon days of reinstall time to REINSTALL 600+GB of applications and games when that could possibly be avoided by a simple in-place upgrade from Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 RTM.
I’m sure that those that insist on upgrading would try the cversion.ini hack posted here: http://windows7center.com/news/microsoft-urges-testers-to-upgrade-to-windows-7-rc-from-vista/
Since you’re not “paying” for Windows 7, you can try this with the RTM OEM cracked version if you dare.
Also realize that not very many people in your circumstance installed 600 GB of applications on code that wasn’t finalized. To me that would be quite a miscalculation. I came expecting that I would have to reformat multiple times possibly so I didn’t think about installing every single application I had. I’m not trying to sound condescending but don’t say Microsoft and this website didn’t warn you. You don’t jump without looking to see where you are jumping first.
[...] Upgrade from Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 will be possible Microsoft has yet to announce whether it is possible to upgrade from Windows 7 RC… [...]
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