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Windows 7

Microsoft has updated their Windows 7 development blog today with some depressing information about how they plan to allow users to migrate from the Beta version of Windows 7 to the Release Candidate – they want us to *shudder* DOWNGRADE to Vista then re-upgrade to the RC!  Of course, they do provide a separate option that will allow users to do a direct upgrade, but the steps they list seem unnecessarily difficult and convoluted when compared to running the upgrade from Vista to 7

If you have a read over at the blog, they claim that this policy has been established to encourage “real-world” testing when it comes to users upgrading TO the RC.  “We’ve also learned that many of you (millions) are running Windows 7 Beta full time. You’re anxious for a refresh. You’ve installed all your applications. You’ve configured and customized the system. You would love to get the RC and quickly upgrade to it from Beta. The RC, however, is about getting breadth coverage to validate the product in real-world scenarios. As a result, we want to encourage you to revert to a Vista image and upgrade or to do a clean install, rather than upgrade the existing Beta. “ It wouldn’t be very practical from Microsoft’s point of view to have users test upgrading from the Beta to the RC.

For users who do not wish to downgrade then upgrade then hope everything works, Microsoft posted the following steps which should allow users to circumvent the pre-release upgrade check.

Here’s what you can do to bypass the check for pre-release upgrade IF YOU REALLY REALLY NEED TO:

1. Download the ISO as you did previously and burn the ISO to a DVD.
2. Copy the whole image to a storage location you wish to run the upgrade from (a bootable flash drive or a directory on any partition on the machine running the pre-release build).
3. Browse to the sources directory.
4. Open the file cversion.ini in a text editor like Notepad.
5. Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. For example, change 7100 to 7000 (pictured below).
6. Save the file in place with the same name.
7. Run setup like you would normally from this modified copy of the image and the version check will be bypassed.

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of installing a new operating system via the “Upgrade” option.  I don’t trust it to be clean or timely.  When it comes time for me to make the switch from Windows 7 Beta to Windows 7 RC, I will be doing a clean install, and I don’t believe that Microsoft’s strategy here will have much impact.

MG_Chris Windows, technology beta, microsoft, operating system, RC, software, upgrade, Windows 7