Install windows 7 fresh from upgrade disk

Indeed, why has Microsoft built hooks into the Windows installer to specifically bypass the qualification test — hooks that have been left in place for years? How can that not be a legitimate candidate for a Windows 7 upgrade? How do I know my Win7 installation is legit? That can sometimes be hard to verify. Sticking Win7 on top of an old copy of Windows is like building a new house on old landfill. A very large percentage of the problems people are having with Windows 7 installations occur with in-place upgrades.

Which Win7 is right for me: bit or bit? One has the bit version and the other has the bit version. If you ignore the recommendation I made in the above item and insist on performing an in-place upgrade, you can do so only from bit to bit or bit to bit. However, if you do a custom clean install on a machine that formerly ran a bit version of XP or Vista, you should seriously consider moving to bit computing.

See my July 16 Top Story for information that will help you determine whether bit is right for you. If you decide that it is, follow the instructions in the article to run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. Can I upgrade Vista Ultimate to any Win7 flavor? If you want to perform an in-place upgrade from bit Vista Ultimate, you have to pay for the Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade and must install the bit version.

However, if you perform a custom clean install, you can upgrade that Vista Ultimate PC to whichever version of Windows 7 you prefer. If you want to do an in-place upgrade and avoid reinstalling your programs and updating your settings, you have very limited choices about which versions of Windows you can start with and what you can upgrade to. I just saved you about a hundred bucks, yes? Some people are having problems with installations that go part way through and freeze.

Others see the installation fail, then automatically try again repeatedly. Even with near-universal positive reviews, Windows 7 could still stand some improvements — and Windows Secrets readers know just how to enhance the new OS.

Sure, some hardware vendors have been slow to provide Win7 device drivers for some of their products. And some people attempting to upgrade to Windows 7 are greeted with blue screens and infinite loops. For example, Cris DeRaud discovered a script that lets you create a Win7 restore point with a single click:. I found an easy alternative from a group of Windows 7 lovers who spell out all the options [on the Windows Seven Forums site]. Now I just click the icon, name my restore point, and click OK.

If you prefer to use the manual approach to creating a restore point in Windows 7, right-click the Computer icon, choose Properties, click System Protection in the left pane, verify that System Protection is on, click the Create button, give the restore point a name, and click Create again.

Stuart Berg reminds us of a free utility from Microsoft that makes finding XP systems on a home network nearly automatic:. Thanks to David and everyone else who let us know how to find this suddenly hidden Windows 7 feature.

Remember when you were a kid, and playing pranks on people was the thing to do? Whether it was jumping out of the closet to scare someone or making the infamous prank calls during a sleepover, it was fun — usually, anyway — for both parties involved.

Why not resurrect an oldie-but-goodie prank: the invisible rope. It will make you look twice the next time you spot someone trying to pull this off! Play the video.

Wiping the data off old drives is a smart thing to do, but secure erasing also must be easy to do. In search of a simple, CD-based disk wiper Kim Boriskin needs a tool that anyone — even unskilled volunteers — can use to reliably wipe the data off hard drives:.

We could use something simpler. Discarded and recycled PCs are a rich vein for identity thieves to tap. I have a solution, but it takes a minute to get there — so bear with me. Scrub3 can overwrite the disk with various patterns, including the original DoD three-pass overwrite and the newer, National Security Agency—recommended seven-pass overwrite. Lenovo describes the utility this way:. SDD offers six levels of data wiping. See Figure 1. The program lets you build a preconfigured data-wiping floppy with as few as two clicks.

Figure 1. The Secure Data Disposal utility can set up a highly secure seven-pass drive wipe with as few as two clicks. The SSD boot floppy is very simple to use. No technical knowledge is required, so the floppy may be used even by novices. In fact, after the target PC is booted from the floppy, the only user input needed to start the actual preconfigured wipe is a simple confirmation. See Figure 2. Figure 2. The SSD boot floppy requires only a confirmation to do its work.

For advanced users, the floppy is highly modifiable. This thread is locked. You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread.

I have the same question 3. Report abuse. Details required :. Cancel Submit. No actual installation of previous software necessary, which means you can do a clean install with Windows 7 Upgrade disk License " How satisfied are you with this reply? Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site. Follow the Windows 7 Install Wizard to install the operating system on the blank, empty and clean system. User can try to input the serial number to check if setup accepts the key.

After Windows 7 is installed, boot up to desktop, and manually enter the Windows 7 upgrade product key to activate online or activate via phone. Steps above, which is practically how to perform clean install with a Windows 7 full version media and product key, should work for some, if not most, users. On system that the system still does not accept an upgrade version product key, or face activation failure error code of 0xCF, try one or more of the following workarounds to get Windows 7 activated:.

Steps above have also been used to clean install Windows Vista Upgrade version. Any answers you receive on your question are purely speculative at this time. The only factual information we all have at this time can be found at the Microsoft Store which is vague at best. We know we should be able to do an in-place Upgrade or a clean Custom installation however, there is nothing officially written by Microsoft as to how to do either.

So either way Upgrade or Custom the Windows 7 Upgrade disk still needs to detect that Vista is installed. Thanks for shedding some light on this issue. Tuesday, July 14, AM. It's possible that there will be a path to install Win7 on a blank hard drive using an upgrade license without installing a qualifying OS, but I'm not hopeful about that. If your main interest is doing a "custom" install to dispose of crapware from a notebook vendor, that should work well, as long as you have sufficient space on the hard drive for the old instllation to be copied to windows.

You can delete that afterwards.