Upgrade vs Full - Win7 Pro

[Mr. Bill]

Hey there guys,

I'm a sysadmin on a navy base here in southern MD. We purchased a single copy of Windows7 64bit to make a simple backup server using the GPT filesystem and windows 7 really impressed the guys around here.

We want to buy a volume license set of Windows 7. We are limited to who we buy from due to government requirements, but TigerDirect is who our logistics team loves.

So: the question... TigerDirect gave us a quote of $120/license for the upgrade. To my knowledge, and my reading, upgrade says you need to have a prior version OS installed or the installation media to use an upgrade disk.

So, right now in the lab I have a personal Win7 Ultimate 64bit [student] upgrade install on a HP xw4400 workstation. I got two brand new 80gb hard drives, configured them for raid1 with the onboard setup, and win7 detected and is now installing the OS.

So in what situation would I need install media? I dont understand.

 

[OvrrDrive]

The upgrade version will do a clean install but when you try to register it with your license key it will say ineligible to install or something. You can get it to install clean and then register with the upgrade key though with a simple registry hack. If you are indeed upgrading (who hasn't bought a version of windows at one time or another these days?) then it isn't even illegal to do so. In fact, MS actually supports this.

Read this and see if it answers some of your questions.

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp