Upgrading Windows 7 RC to Ultimate Final

3/1/2010 12:12:47 AM

By RetroRalph

So it's almost upon us, those who took part in Microsoft's Windows 7 RELEASE CANDIDATE program have just a few days to purchase and install the full ultimate version.

One issue with Windows 7 RC 7100 is that the full version you get on the DVD does not allow you to upgrade. With previous beta's of Windows 7 you could upgrade to the newest one with a little work and with the final cut Microsoft is still challenging us to do it ourselves! It's a bit strange considering millions participated in downloading Windows 7 RC.

So I thought I would detail the process for any of you yet to do it. Simply copy the contents of the DVD to a folder on your computer :-

It should look something like the above screenshot. Then go into the SOURCES directory and edit the cversion.ini file in there with notepad :-

Change the minclient version to 7000, then save the file. Now all you have to do is run setup.exe from the folder you copied the DVD to and it will upgrade your release candidate to retail version. The process takes roughly an hour or so.

2 responses to Upgrading Windows 7 RC to Ultimate Final

liveevil wrote:

3/2/2010 1:50:40 PM

Anything that wants keeping should always be backed up to an external harddrive anyway, that's what I do just in case your boot record gets screwed by a dodgy program and chkdsk can't even get you to safe mode (That's only happened to me once in about four years but that was on XP, so far Win7 has been flawless in every aspect). A full install of Windows 7 takes about 20 minutes. (The Release Candidate is about 6 months old and I don't know why anyone would still be using it).

Harmik wrote:

3/4/2010 6:16:12 AM

Always best to format and do a clean install.

And Windows 7 is awesome.