Windows 7 can be purchased in various editions like Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Ultimate. Next to these editions are also different versions of the operating system like oem, full retail and upgrade. If you purchase a Windows 7 Upgrade you are only allowed to upgrade if you own a previous version of a Windows operating system. But what if you want to perform a clean install on a new computer system? The installation using the Windows 7 Upgrade DVD would work fine but it would not be possible to activate the operating system.
Paul Thurott discovered a way to perform a clean install of Windows 7 using Windows 7 Upgrade media and to activate it with just a simple tweak which can be applied in the running operating system.
According to Paul all that needs to be done after performing the initial clean installation of Windows 7 is the following:
After performing the clean install, ensure that there are no Windows Updates pending that would require a system reboot. (You’ll see an orange shield icon next to Shutdown in the Start Menu if this is the case).
Then, open regedit.exe with Start Menu Search and navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/
Change MediaBootInstall from “1″ to “0″.
Open the Start Menu again and type cmd to display a shortcut to the Command Line utility. Right-click this shortcut and choose “Run as administrator.” Handle the UAC prompt.
In the command line window, type: slmgr /rearm
Then tap ENTER, close the command line window and reboot. When Windows 7 reboots, run the Activate Windows utility, type in your product key and activate windows. It should just work.
There you have it. An easy way to do a clean install of Windows 7 using an upgrade DVD. This is obviously only legal if you own a previous Microsoft operating system that’s supported by the Windows 7 Update program.
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7 Responses to “Clean Install Windows 7 With Windows 7 Upgrades”
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“But what if you want to perform a clean install on a new computer system? The installation using the Windows 7 Upgrade DVD would work fine but it would not be possible to activate the operating system.”
I don’t understand this! Is this a new policy in WIn7 from MS?
When I did a clean install of XP, all I had to do during the install process was insert a CD of any earlier MS OS and there weren’t any problems. Will this method no longer work?
Jojo, Microsoft has changed that. See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/930985/en-us or http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_upgrade_clean.asp for details (Vista and 7 basically handle this the same way)
OK, thanks Martin. This is another really stupid Microsoft policy!
I suspect that their real goal in implementing this was to milk some more $$ out of their customers.
If you do an upgrade on your old messed up system, it might work or it might not. If you want to ensure a better result by doing a clean install, then you’ll either need to buy a NEW full retail version or wipe your system, install a starter version of Windows and then install the upgrade you purchased.
Jeez.