New Desktop - Super Easy OS Upgrade

[Renegade]

I'm quite frankly stunned. I bought a new desktop and it had Windows 7 Home Basic x64 on it, but I need Windows 7 Ultimate x64. So... upgrade time... Ouch... Pain... Been there. Done that. Hate it. Partioning sucks. New OS installations suck. Not fun.

SURPRISE~!

I ran the Windows upgrade advisor, stuck in my MSDN Windows 7 Ultimate license, and it worked perfectly.

To boot, it upgraded in less than 5 minutes.

I was SHOCKED~! It could not have been smoother.

As everyone well knows, Microsoft has had serious licensing issue in the past. But they seem to have everything covered now. And covered extremely well.

I posted a bit with a screenshot here. (WARNING: That post is safe, but the blog there is mostly a rant about Macs, Apple, OSX, and iPhone development. i.e. A LOT of profanity.)

Anyways, I was just so happy that I didn't need to install Windows that I needed to share it!

[MilesAhead]

Someone on another board answered a question how to upgrade and outlined pretty much what you said. Good to get verification.

[zridling]

Great news, Renegade! On the Linux side, several big distros now have seamless upgrades, too. But to be fair, you're only upgrading two things on Linux -- the kernel and the desktop environment -- both or either of which you could upgrade on your own at any time depending on your existing distro version.

[Gwen7]

i had the same experience. 

but this leads me to believe suspect micosoft actually installs the full 'ultimate edition' on every machine and then enables different feature sets based on the license key you enter.

so to me it seems it's more like unlocking the software rather than upgrading it in the traditional sense.

and haven't games and trialware already been doing that for many years? :-))

[MilesAhead]

Yup.  There's only one install DVD no matter what version you put on. That may be a big reason why Ultimate doesn't take up 100 GB.  They had to trim it down so Home Premium purchasers wouldn't squawk.

[Eóin]

[edit] Oops... Hadn't read thread properly, Gwen7 said exactly what I was going to say.

[Renegade]

Yup.  There's only one install DVD no matter what version you put on. That may be a big reason why Ultimate doesn't take up 100 GB.  They had to trim it down so Home Premium purchasers wouldn't squawk.

Actually, there are a LOT of different DVDs for Windows 7. Here's an MSDN list with file sizes:


Windows 7 Enterprise N (x64) - DVD (English) 2,674 (MB)
Windows 7 Enterprise N (x86) - DVD (English) 2,030 (MB)
Windows 7 Home Premium N (x64) - DVD (English) 2,774 (MB)
Windows 7 Home Premium N (x86) - DVD (English) 2,125 (MB)
Windows 7 Professional N (x64) - DVD (English) 2,774 (MB)
Windows 7 Professional N (x86) - DVD (English) 2,125 (MB)
Windows 7 Starter N (x86) - DVD (English) 2,125 (MB)
Windows 7 Ultimate N (x64) - DVD (English) 2,774 (MB)
Windows 7 Ultimate N (x86) - DVD (English) 2,125 (MB)
Windows 7 Enterprise (x64) - DVD (English) 2,977 (MB)
Windows 7 Enterprise (x86) - DVD (English) 2,289 (MB)
Windows 7 Home Basic (x86) - DVD (English) 2,386 (MB)
Windows 7 Home Premium (x64) - DVD (English) 3,075 (MB)
Windows 7 Home Premium (x86) - DVD (English) 2,386 (MB)
Windows 7 Professional (x64) - DVD (English) 3,075 (MB)
Windows 7 Professional (x86) - DVD (English) 2,386 (MB)
Windows 7 Starter (x86) - DVD (English) 2,386 (MB)
Windows 7 Ultimate (x64) - DVD (English) 3,075 (MB)
Windows 7 Ultimate (x86) - DVD (English) 2,386 (MB)

Unique File Sizes:

2,030 (MB)
2,125 (MB)
2,289 (MB)
2,386 (MB)
2,674 (MB)
2,774 (MB)
2,977 (MB)
3,075 (MB)

Those are all MSDN downloads though. The retail or RTM versions may differ slightly. Not sure.

[4wd]

You can install whatever version of Win7 you like, (except Enterprise), from any normal Win7 install disk, (not sure about upgrade DVDs) - I've done it with a Win7HP DVD and it worked fine.

All you need to do is modify or delete the file that tells the installer what to install by default - once that is done you will be presented with a list of Win7 OSes you can install from that DVD.