Windows 7 upgrade or clean install ?

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Windows 7 upgrade or clean install?

Recently most of the people are having question: whether to go for Windows 7 upgrade or clean install? Here is the guide to choose between Windows 7 upgrade or clean install.

There are two principal types of licenses for Retail version of Windows 7. They are full or full package product (FPP) and upgrade.

To be entitled for upgrade license, customers have to possess an existing Windows license. The most observable differences between full and upgrade versions are different prices for full and upgrade license. You can use any number of workarounds to install the operating system legally if you qualify for an upgrade license and those same workarounds might technically succeed if you do not qualify for an upgrade license, but your license is not valid.

Windows 7 Upgrade Chart has been released by Microsoft that explains the upgrade paths from both Windows XP and Windows Vista to Windows 7. The chart mainly tells users if they need to do a clean install of the operating system or can upgrade the operating system directly. Still Microsoft is making it complicated to clean install windows 7 with Upgrade media, as it did with Windows Vista.

For the average user the chart is way to confusing and that it does contain at least one product that does not exist at all, according to Ed Bott. Most of the details displayed in the chart are superfluous.

How to clean Install Windows 7 with an Upgrade DVD Disc or ISO Image

To create a bootable Windows 7 ISO image from unpacked Windows 7 installation files, User who has downloaded Windows 7 boxed ESD installation files should follow these steps:

Boot up the PC with the Windows 7 Upgrade DVD disc media into DVD-ROM drive. (Note: May need to change boot sequence or boot order of device in BIOS, and/or press any key to boot from CD/DVD drive).
To install the operating system on the blank, empty and clean systems follow the Windows 7 Install Wizard.
Do not enter the upgrade version product key, during installation, when prompted for a product key. (Tip: This step is to prevent “Invalid Product Key” error. User can try to input the serial number to check if setup accepts the key. If it is accepted, all the rest of steps can be skipped).
During the installation process, unselect and untick the automatically activate Windows when there is online check box
Boot up to desktop after Windows 7 is installed and manually enter the Windows 7 upgrade product key to activate online or activate via phone.

The above steps are given for how to perform clean install with a Windows 7 full version media and product key. This is helpful for most of the users, but not all. On system that the system still does not accept an upgrade version product key, or face activation failure error code of 0xC004F061, try one or more of the subsequent 3 workarounds to get Windows 7 activated.

Workaround 1:

To Insert Product Key and Activate, use SLMgr Commands. To clean install Windows Vista Upgrade version the below steps should be used. To check activation status from command line, use slmgr -dlv or slmgr -dli.

Open an elevated command prompt as administrator.
Use the command (slmgr -ipk ) to install product key.
Activate Windows 7 with the command (slmgr –ato).

Workaround 2:

With double installs, clean install Windows 7 Upgrade. Below steps must be used as a workaround to clean install Windows Vista with upgrade media and it is less used as it is time-consuming.

Allow system to boot to desktop, after starting up the just installed Windows 7 system.
Insert the same Windows 7 DVD media into CD/DVD optical drive tray to start Install Windows wizard again. Otherwise, mount the Windows 7 ISO image to a virtual CD/DVD-ROM drive, or directly run setup.exe from the unpacked Windows 7 installation files.
Reinstall Windows 7 once again (either Upgrade or Custom Install should be OK), enter product key during installation so that Windows 7 can be automatically activated when user first online after installation is done.

Workaround 3:

With MediaBootInstall registry hack, clean Install and Activate Windows 7.

Ensure that no Windows Updates pending task which requires a system reboot to finish installing after booting up.
Run registry editor (RegEdit).
Navigate to the registry key: (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE)
In the right pane, change the value data for MediaBootInstall from 1 to 0. Otherwise, just download and execute MediaBootInstall.reg to merge the value into registry.
Open an elevated command prompt as administrator.
Run the command (slmgr –rearm) to reset Windows 7 activation status.
Reboot the computer.
Run the Activate Windows utility (accessible from bottom section of Control Panel -> System and Security -> System, or type Activate Windows into Start Search), type in the upgrade product key and activate Windows.