Upgrading Windows 7 Evaluation Copy 7100 to Professional

Forums › Microsoft Windows › Upgrading Windows 7 Evaluation Copy 7100 to Professional - least expensive

Attobrute

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#57263 7-Feb-2010 22:21

Hi All,

I have installed build 7100 of Win 7 on our home computer and got it set up just the way we want it. I do not want to go back to Win XP, which is what we were running before.

Soon the RC copy will be rendered unuseable, and I want to upgrade legitimately, but ~$370 is a lot of money.

My question is: what is the least expensive way of upgrading to a full copy of Win 7 Professional (or Ultimate if not too much more expensive)?

I have read on the net about how to alter the some settings so that you can just use an upgrade disk rather than a full copy.

I have a friend coming accross from the US soon. Could he buy a copy there that I could use?

I have relatives in the UK. Could they buy a copy and ship it here?

Will copies of Win 7 that originate outside NZ work in NZ?

Does anyone have experience with this, or a report of how they did it?

Cheers,

Andrew

ZollyMonsta

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#296935 7-Feb-2010 23:00

You can get pro for $270... OEM.. just buy some more ram or something cheap with it

http://www.ascent.co.nz/produc...

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nzpat

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#296936 7-Feb-2010 23:07

Or you could just "patch" it to last indefinitely.

Nety

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#296948 8-Feb-2010 06:21

Yes you can purchase a copy of Windows from another county and use is legally in NZ. There is no difference between a copy brought in NZ and one brought in the USA. I am not sure what the situation is for a copy brought from England as I know they had special releases of Vista due to licensing restrictions. They would still work but did not have some components installed as part of the install.
Best to get it from the USA if you have someone going there. They are cheapest there or at least were last time I checked.

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#296950 8-Feb-2010 06:31

Hmm upgrade (which is what you want) for home premium works out at around $175 USD so not too bad. Or here you can get if for $218.27 from Ascent.
Just to confirm that you CAN purchase a upgrade version because you own XP. There is a bit of confusion on this because people see the upgrade path says that you cannot upgrade from XP however that is talking about running the Windows install and selecting upgrade it is NOT talking about upgrading from a licensing perspective.

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#296992 8-Feb-2010 10:43

Do you actually need pro or ultimate? Home premium is good enough for most home machines.

You can get the Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack (3 licenses) Upgrade for ~290 NZD, works out good value at <$100 per license.

lchiu7

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#298788 14-Feb-2010 09:46

IIRC the Windows 7 RC was Windows Ultimate. So it's not possible to upgrade that to any other release. And even then Microsoft don't support a RC to RTM upgrade. If you want to keep your current settings you will need to purchase Ultimate and hack a file on the DVD to allow it to be upgraded.

If you don't care about retaining settings etc. then Home Premium is a good (and cheap) choice.

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SepticSceptic

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#298836 14-Feb-2010 12:34

FWIW, I tried updating 7100 to TechNets Ultimate version, and get "Windows 7 Ultimate cannot be upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate N ... etc." Custom install is the only option @ this stage.
Tried doing the cversion.ini hack, no avail.
Google search didn't bring much useful info.
So it's probably a case of a fresh installation. Though I'm not sure if the custom installation will wipe the existing OS partition, or retain it all under Windows.Old. My son has a huge collection of game saves for Sims3, and he'd be pretty annoyed if he lost all those :-)

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#298841 14-Feb-2010 12:54

Why would you upgrade to a "Windows N" version? I think you just got the wrong file, should get the correct one.

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#298850 14-Feb-2010 14:15

SepticSceptic: FWIW, I tried updating 7100 to TechNets Ultimate version, and get "Windows 7 Ultimate cannot be upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate N ... etc." Custom install is the only option @ this stage.
Tried doing the cversion.ini hack, no avail.
Google search didn't bring much useful info.
So it's probably a case of a fresh installation. Though I'm not sure if the custom installation will wipe the existing OS partition, or retain it all under Windows.Old. My son has a huge collection of game saves for Sims3, and he'd be pretty annoyed if he lost all those :-)

If you aren't already running a regular backup of all user data (My Documents, Email, Browser favourites, Game save data) to at lesat a seperate/external drive you are crazy and should look at that right now.

Also look at Windows Easy Transfer to move settings and user data to an external USB drive and then restore it back when you have reinstalled.

SepticSceptic

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#299691 17-Feb-2010 09:37

freitasm: Why would you upgrade to a "Windows N" version? I think you just got the wrong file, should get the correct one.

Ahh, yes, wrong file - my bad .. Found the K version at the bottom of the list. Upgrade went fine after changing the cversion.ini file.

Everything working fine, but it's not a good idea leaving bits of beta code floating around, and may possibly nullify the ability to raise any support requests, so it's a clean install this weekend.

lchiu7

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#299697 17-Feb-2010 10:00

Agreed. I did the hack to update RC to RTM and after about 8 hours(!) it all worked. But I looked at the apps I had and data and decided to back it all up and do a clean installation. That took about 90 minutes and then I installed the apps as I found I needed them. Bootup time is so much faster now.

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SepticSceptic

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#299700 17-Feb-2010 10:08

Boot up time fast now, but end up suffering from task-bar app creep :-). All very well being able to hide them, but apps shouldn't be sneaking in there unless I explicitly ask them to. Ditto with apps sneaking in starter stubs at boot time to make them appear to start quicker when the app is actually launched. It's like a death with a thousand cuts.

ariosto

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#299710 17-Feb-2010 10:39

Do you think Autoruns would help out in that regard?

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#299711 17-Feb-2010 10:51

Yes, it would, but it's like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Apps shouldn't install quick start stubs without at least asking permission. Poor programming in both respects - having to install a starter stub to make an application appear to start quicker just covers poor programming, IMHO. Anyway, this is my hobby horse, and getting outside the intent of this thread. :-)