Windows 7 upgrade for just 30 bucks, totally worth it

Yay me! I get to download all of my operating systems for free. Thanks a lot MSDNAA!

Anyways, I installed 7 a few weeks ago and I like it a lot more than shitty Vista. Crashes a lot less and it's a lot more stable. I haven't ried the 64bit version becuase my current PC is a piece of crap.

Thank you for sharing this info!

I work at Best Buy and they have a bunch of 'e-learnings' to get certificates of taking online courses of theirs and sometimes some of them have benefits if you take them due to being optional. Right now there's an e-learning about Microsoft 7 and if you take it Microsoft will send you free disks.

Sorry to bump up an older topic.

Thanks, ordered 7 just now. Great deal.

Wow. This is Bitchin'! How do you get and .edu based e-mail from your college?

Based on the good feedback I got regarding from my brother about Windows 7, I'll be probably be changing from Vista to Windows 7, since Vista never really seemed all that stable to me.

You probably don't need the unix subsystem. It is kinda handy, since it operates at the kernel level(this means its not emulated), but cygwin would probably provide all the services you would need for your engineering class (like gcc) - so there is no reason to pay an extra 200$ for ultimate (cygwin is free, look it up).

As a side note for anyone else who is interested, I recently installed windows 7 64-bit upgrade using a copy of 32-bit vista. I had some trouble with it initially though, because if you attempt to use the upgrade option it will tell you that you can't upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit. If you do a clean install it will tell you that your key isn't valid. I had to do a clean install with vista first, and then install windows 7 over it without formatting the drives. If anyone needs help with this feel free to pm me.

Was your vista 32 bit a oem key? Why did it say your key was invalid when you tried to upgrade? How does it check if your key is valid, do you have to connect to the internet?

I have a relatively new computer, and I have used windows 7 beta for its main operating system. I have a windows xp oem key from a old, old computer that I will use to install the windows 7 upgrade, so I would like to know about the validation process so hopefully, I can migrate everything at most a day of work without problems.

I'm guessing as long as your operating system doesn't know that its an illegal version (windows genuine advantage being run on an illegal version and being caught) then you'll be fine. And if your doing a clean install (which I highly recommend) then just have an install disc of an older version of windows prepared.

Too bad I live in the Philippines.. :(

*calls uncle's computer shot*

Oh look, apparently he plans to get me one as a Christmas gift. Yay!

No actually... its funny. My version of vista was also an upgrade, but it never gave me any trouble installing it even though I never installed xp first. Both the vista I used and the copy of windows 7 I used were licensed student software (so no, not an oem key).

Normally with upgrades you are supposed to install your upgrade while windows is running, rather than from the bios. The only reason this won't work for windows 7 is if you are trying to go from a 32-bit OS to 64-bit windows 7. So if you are just upgrading to 32-bit windows 7 you can disregard all of this. It should be pretty easy for you to upgrade.

If you try to do a clean install with the windows 7 upgrade it will tell you that your key is invalid because its just an upgrade key. So far as I can tell it checks to see if you currently have an authentic copy of windows installed without telling you about it while at the installation screen. There are two places it checks your upgrade key, during installation and again when you validate online. If you buy the retail upgrade you can validate over the phone as well if you like (student versions don't have this option). The first check, during installation, you can actually just tell it to skip (you don't have to give it a key at all - it will give you 30 days to validate online before windows stops working). If you tell it to skip this step while installing an upgrade though it won't authenticate properly later unless you call them.

So to summarize, you need to:
1. Have windows xp/vista installed (I would recommend a clean install, but if you want to save your files it should be fine either way).
2. Boot from you windows 7 upgrade disk (from the BIOS, not while windows is running).
3. Install like normal, don't select the upgrade option. When it asks you for the partition, choose the one you installed xp/vista on but don't reformat it. It should tell you that the partition you selected has a version of windows installed and that it is going to move the system files to the folder windows.old or something.
4. When you get the the screen that asks you for the key enter your upgrade key. It will check the old system files automatically to verify you are upgrading from an authentic copy of windows.
5. Once its done, delete the windows.old folder from your C drive.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I am currently going from Windows xp to Windows 7 64 bit b/c I have a current processor, with 4 gigs of ram.

I will hijack this thread again or make a new one detailing my experiences on Oct 22 when I get my copy.

I'm wondering if I upgrade my Vista to Windows7, will all my games and stuff still be there?

Here are the conditions for keeping your stuff

Windows 7 upgrade

If your Vista is 32 bit and want to upgrade Windows 7 32 bit, you can keep all your programs and stuff.


If your Vista is 32 bit, but want to upgrade to Windows 7 64 bit. You will have to do a custom/clean install. It is called custom install b/c its basically a clean install with one important distinction. You will be able to keep your data from Vista b/c Windows 7 just archives everything from your old Vista partition in folder called Windows Old or something.

Thus your movies, pictures from Vista will be accessible in the Windows old folder after you upgrade. Again, however, you will need to reinstall all your programs again.


If your Vista is 64 bit, and want to Windows 7 64 bit. You can keep all your programs and stuff.

Thanks a lot. I was worried about having to reinstall Fate/Stay Night and all the other games that I downloaded.

My Vista right now is 64 bit and I believe I'm getting a 64 bit Windows 7, so it should be no problem

The only thing I'm wondering is how 7 64-bit will work with the way I have my harddrives set up. I have a 5 gig partition with XP 32-bit on it and the rest is a seperate partition with Program Files folder and Documents and Settings folder and another harddrive is for the My Documents folder. I'd repartition more space using gparted for it. It'd probably be the same if you had to do it on Vista but I never got that far with it and just kept XP. I do remember on vista they had 2 seperate program files folders for x86 and x64 for some reason but I never understood why they couldn't just use the same folder. Just mainly wondering if anyone knows an easy way to relocate all these folders to how I have it set up.