Proper way to Reinstall Win7 Upgrade Version

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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So I am helping a friend with their computer (I seem to do this way too much)

The Laptop (some Acer model) originally came with a 32bit Vista Home edition, but at some point they bought a Windows 7 upgrade disk and upgraded the computer to Windows 7.

Long story short, I'm putting a new, larger, faster hard drive in it, and figured I'd take this opportunity to do a clean Windows install.

What is the best way to do a clean Windows 7 install using a Windows 7 upgrade key?

First time I tried I just installed it as a fresh install, but it didn't accept the key during activation.

Then I did some googling, and the best I've been able to find thus far is to reinstall the Win7 as an upgrade from inside Win 7, then it should accept the upgrade key...

This seems horribly inefficient, and as if it might leave a lot of junk files, and potentially messed up registry entries on the system (IMHO operating system upgrades are always bad., regardless of whether its Windows, OS X or Linux).

I mean, I guess it's better than reinstalling Vista and then installing the Win 7 upgrade, but is it really necessary?

Is there a better way to do this, and get a clean install?
 
Glad to help. I hope one of those cause the least of a headache for you.
 
I'm going to be giving this a shot within the next few days. I had found that website you linked prior to finding this thread. I have faith that the registry edit will work if treating it as an install disk doesn't. At least I'll be able to get Win 7 on there!
 
Punkrulz said:
I'm going to be giving this a shot within the next few days. I had found that website you linked prior to finding this thread. I have faith that the registry edit will work if treating it as an install disk doesn't. At least I'll be able to get Win 7 on there!
Click to expand...

I did go ahead with the registry method, and it worked just fine!

I did have to call microsoft and enter a bunch of codes in order to get it to activate though.
 
The new automated phone activation is a whole lot better than the old one. I hated that one so much...
 
Zarathustra[H];1037882340 said:
So I am helping a friend with their computer (I seem to do this way too much)

The Laptop (some Acer model) originally came with a 32bit Vista Home edition, but at some point they bought a Windows 7 upgrade disk and upgraded the computer to Windows 7.

Long story short, I'm putting a new, larger, faster hard drive in it, and figured I'd take this opportunity to do a clean Windows install.

What is the best way to do a clean Windows 7 install using a Windows 7 upgrade key?

First time I tried I just installed it as a fresh install, but it didn't accept the key during activation.

Then I did some googling, and the best I've been able to find thus far is to reinstall the Win7 as an upgrade from inside Win 7, then it should accept the upgrade key...

This seems horribly inefficient, and as if it might leave a lot of junk files, and potentially messed up registry entries on the system (IMHO operating system upgrades are always bad., regardless of whether its Windows, OS X or Linux).

I mean, I guess it's better than reinstalling Vista and then installing the Win 7 upgrade, but is it really necessary?

Is there a better way to do this, and get a clean install?
Click to expand...

Method 2 of http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows-7/clean-install-windows-7-with-upgrade-media. Remember to not enter the product key during the installation, skip it and do the above method inside Windows 7 itself.

You can also call MS and they do an automated version of Method 2. :)
 
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