My Windows 7 experience probably reads a lot like a lot of other people’s experiences. I put the RC1 onto my wife’s PC as soon as it came out, as she was running VISTA at the time (I blame Spore). I then dallied with a dual boot system on my own machine as XP SP3 was running my racing simulators just fine and I didn’t need to splash out on a memory upgrade to make my machine games worthy in W7. Once I’d got the extra memory though there was no real reason to keep XP around longer than it took me to find a cross disk migrate tool so I could move my PATA installed W7 onto my SATA drive, for which I thank Acronis who sell an awesome bunch of tools to handle exactly this sort of thing.

So about a week ago I get a MASSIVE panic on when I see a message pop up telling me that my RC1 install will roll over and stick its legs in the air (and not in a good way) at the end of Feb. Now, I’ve been running this install as my main desktop for 9 months, as my wife has on hers. So in very little time I have to install two Windows 7s without losing any program data, settings, game saves and all the other gumph you accumulate on your desktop machine. I really really don’t want to do a fresh install, and my wife tells me that if I mess with her Sims3 neighbourhoods she will have parts of my person as adornment, if you know what I’m saying.

So two upgrade installs are in order.

And this is where the path gets a little twisty. You cannot upgrade RC1 into a release W7. You cannot upgrade an Ultimate install into anything other than an Ultimate. 32Bit only goes to 32bit. Antitrust N releases can only upgrade other antitrust N releases. So basically you can only use the upgrade install function if you are upgrading what you have to the exact same thing. I understand it deigns to allow you to upgrade VISTA to W7, so long as all the above criteria are met; i.e. 32bit to 32bit, ultimate to ultimate, etc.

RC1 is Ultimate. I don’t have more than 3gig RAM and do like a bit of hardware driver support, so my install is RC1 32bit. So I need to find me a release to market Windows 7 Ultimate 32Bit (non antitrust N) to install and then I have 30 days to work out how I’m going to pay for them (MS are kind enough to allow you a 30 days grace trial period before activation), or get me a cheaper version and hose everything.

Hang on, I hear you think – didn’t this guy just say you can’t do an upgrade of RC1 anyway? Well, gentle reader, just because you can’t do something doesn’t mean it can’t be done. There’s two files on an install ISO that you can edit to enable you to 1) install a different level of install, and 2) specify the minimum upgrade version.

In \Sources\ there is a file called EI.CFG that tells the installer what version it installs. So delete that and it will allow you to choose Basic, Expert, Advanced, Home, Professional, Ultimate, Whatever, Etc. So long as you have the correct valid key for the version you are installing, it’s all good, right?

Also in \Sources\ there is a file called CVERSION.INI and this is the baby you want to edit to enable upgrading your RC1. Change MinClient=whatever to MinClient=7000 and you’re good to go.

Seriously, that’s all it takes. Delete one file, edit another. Save the ISO, burn it to a DVD, run setup.exe and jump through the whiney driver hoops.

Now, that said, who wants to buy me a couple of W7 Ultimate installs?

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