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I was so hoping to have better news to share, but with all the conflicting reports and my own troubles testing this while on the road, it's been a messy 24 hours. However, after staying up late last night and working through a few different scenarios, I think I do have a (fairly) simple way to clean install Windows 7 with Upgrade media. That is, it should be easier than the old "install it twice" hack that I previously documented for Vista (though that should still work as well).
Put simply, the goal here is to clean install Windows 7 on a virgin, unused PC. You can boot and run Setup with the Upgrade media for Windows 7, but when you go to activate, it won't work.
Thanks to Kevin Fisher and a bit of testing, I have a simple workaround that does work.
After performing the clean install, ensure that there are no Windows Updates pending that would require a system reboot. (You'll see an orange shield icon next to Shutdown in the Start Menu if this is the case).
Then, open regedit.exe with Start Menu Search and navigate to:
HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/
Change MediaBootInstall from "1" to "0".
Open the Start Menu again and type cmd to display a shortcut to the Command Line utility. Right-click this shortcut and choose "Run as administrator." Handle the UAC prompt.
In the command line window, type: slmgr /rearm
Then tap ENTER, close the command line window and reboot. When Windows 7 reboots, run the Activate Windows utility, type in your product key and activate windows.
Voila!
Put simply, the goal here is to clean install Windows 7 on a virgin, unused PC. You can boot and run Setup with the Upgrade media for Windows 7, but when you go to activate, it won't work.
Thanks to Kevin Fisher and a bit of testing, I have a simple workaround that does work.
After performing the clean install, ensure that there are no Windows Updates pending that would require a system reboot. (You'll see an orange shield icon next to Shutdown in the Start Menu if this is the case).
Then, open regedit.exe with Start Menu Search and navigate to:
HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/
Change MediaBootInstall from "1" to "0".
Open the Start Menu again and type cmd to display a shortcut to the Command Line utility. Right-click this shortcut and choose "Run as administrator." Handle the UAC prompt.
In the command line window, type: slmgr /rearm
Then tap ENTER, close the command line window and reboot. When Windows 7 reboots, run the Activate Windows utility, type in your product key and activate windows.
Voila!
More here.
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