Comments on: Upgrade from Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 will be possible

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:52:40 +0000

I installed the 64 bit 7 ultimate RC, can I install home premium over 7 ultimate RC?

By: Windows 7 Upgrade Chart

Windows 7 Upgrade Chart — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:40:23 +0000

[...] 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… [...]

By: Geo

Geo — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:07:06 +0000

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.

By: Charles

Charles — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:03:18 +0000

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.

By: Charles

Charles — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:59:50 +0000

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.

By: Geo

Geo — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:52:08 +0000

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.

By: Charles

Charles — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:32:21 +0000

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.

By: Al

Al — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 03:44:08 +0000

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.

By: Al

Al — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 03:43:16 +0000

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

By: Geo

Geo — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 03:29:01 +0000

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.