News - Microsoft Windows 7 arrives early

[HEXUS]

Guess what popped through the letterbox this morning?

Read more.

[shadowmaster]

Just checked my currys account and they've said they dispatched it yesterday via DHL. Checked the tracking number and its out for delivery today

[menthel]

Mine are with Amazon and play, so I am in for a royal mail nightmare! However I will download my student upgrade on thursday!

[danroyle]

mine is with amazon has been despatched today but will probably get caught in the post.

[Percy1983]

I ordered with PC world at £45 for should get mine soon enough then... hopefully...

Wonder if they will activate yet?

[collettnj]

I ordered with PC world at £45 for should get mine soon enough then... hopefully...

I ordered 2 from PC world at that price and they just arrived today with Royal Mail

I guess they dispatched very early to try and compensate for the RM problems at the moment!

[darrensen]

If we have the RC version of 7 do we need to reinstall or can we just upgrade?

[beanbandit]

mine is with amazon has been despatched today but will probably get caught in the post.

Mine has also shipped from Amazon, what delivery option did you select? I chose standard delivery @ £2.75 and its showing as shipped via City Link, which was a big surprise as i was expecting it to come by RM.

[beanbandit]

If we have the RC version of 7 do we need to reinstall or can we just upgrade?

I believe its reinstall only.

[darrensen]

I believe its reinstall only.

Ahhhhh! Never mind

[scaryjim]

I believe its reinstall only.

Correct, I'm afraid - after all, the RC is full of experimental code that probably didn't make it into the RTM version, and you really don't want non-production code hanging around in your OS kernel...

[mercyground]

I ordered with PC world at £45 for should get mine soon enough then... hopefully...

Wonder if they will activate yet?

Yes. Activation servers will work as MSDN editions are up and going.

[mercyground]

If we have the RC version of 7 do we need to reinstall or can we just upgrade?

If you are up to copying the disc to a flash drive and editing a file you can but its generally better to do a clean reinstall.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1381323 has the info for installing off a pendrive.

Works with Windows 7!

I member asked me to outline to him how I installed Vista from a flash drive onto my AAO, and I thought it might me of some use to other members here. My goal is to just have it written out somewhere on [H] so if people search for it here they will find a straightforward guide.

This method has worked for me many times and for many different people. It is an incredibly easy process, especially if you consider the pain it is to install XP from a flash drive....

Ok, here we go, follow closely.

1. Format the flash drive (at least a 4GB) as NTFS, NOT FAT32! Important!

2. Put the Vista/7 disk in the drive, and open the command line with Administrator privileges.

3. Enter the text below directly into the command line, replacing the first drive letter with the drive letter of the Vista/7 DVD, and the second drive letter with the letter of the flash drive.

xcopy D: E: /e /h

The "D:" being your optical drive where the Vista/7 DVD is, and the "E:" being the flash drive. Change the letters to suit your setup. This might take awhile as it copies all the files on the Vista/7 DVD to the flash drive. Just doing this from the explorer misses some hidden files.

At this point i've edited it to avoid a exclusive lock error.

4. Once that is finished, change to the CDROM drive.

D:

After that, type

cd boot

You are now in the boot directory.

5. Now to run the bootsect command that makes the flash drive bootable. Enter the following, and just like before, replace the E: with the drive letter of the flash drive.

bootsect /nt60 E:

If you accidentally put the wrong drive letter there, you could be in trouble so pay attention!

All you are interested in is if it says: Bootcode was successfully updated on all target volumes.

If you know how to boot from a USB device you are all set, if not, consult you're mobo's documentation.

I tried this method many times on many different PC's with a FAT32 formatted flash drive, but the install would always fail.

I am completely open to any more suggestions anyone may have, lets hear 'em!

For the incredibly lazy:

http://lifehacker.com/5347382/wintof...ased-installer

Becuase you run the bootsector updater from the CDROM rather than the Flash drive you avoid the lock error that happens. You still get the same result.

Happy installing

[mercyground]

And to edit the file that allows you to upgrade from the RC:

From http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.ph...72&postcount=4

It is a very bad idea to install RTM over the RC. However, being a technet subscriber I assume you know that already as most people who buy the technet subscriptions are in the IT field and understand the pains that go with trying to upgrade from an RC to an RTM.

That being said....


You can trick the RTM to install over the RC. Here is how:

Extract the files in the ISO
Browse to the “sources” directory
Open “cversion.ini”
Change the ‘MinClient’ number from “7233.0” to “7100.0”
You should end up with something like this:

[HostBuild]
MinClient=7100.0
MinServer=7100.0

Save the file
Run “setup.exe” from the extrated files and upgrade!

If you edit the file on the flash drive you made above then you can just install from the drive and upgrade any RC install.

[dangel]

If you are up to copying the disc to a flash drive and editing a file you can but its generally better to do a clean reinstall.

Just don't do it. It goes wrong - I know been there and done that

On one system I ended up unable to uninstall all sorts of software, or even being able to reinstall it again. MS disabled this with good reason and personally, I wouldn't upgrade windows period (well aside from my brief experiment!).

For the incredibly lazy:

http://lifehacker.com/5347382/wintof...ased-installer

This works just fine - lazy or not it's far less messing about

[mercyground]

Yeah upgrading from the RC will have issues. Its why i said possible but not advised.

The lifehacker link is good but it is also good to know how it all works behind the scenes as you can also use them for making XP usb installers (admittedly with alot more hassle as XP does NOT expect to be installed from a removable flash drive)