trying to make sense of the cluster____ of OS upgrades...

[lost_soul]

Right, so I recently put together a new machine and I didn't buy Windows with it. The only modern game I care to play at this point is TDM, so I didn't see a need to buy it and I just installed Debian and XP. Now i've got some extra cash and I was considering buying the Windows 7 family pack upgrade for $105. It is clear that you can do a clean install over XP, but there are of course conflicting stories about doing the same over Windows 2000. I do have a boxed copy of Windows 2000 here and if I was allowed to use one of the Win7 upgrades on a 2000 machine, it would make it worth the price.

 

Now of course this information isn't clearly and officially spelled out anywhere. Places like this make it sound as though 2000 can be used with the upgrade, but a fresh install is required, just like with XP. I then read on another forum that MS changed their minds on this later and 2000 can NOT be used with an upgrade disk to 7. Sure enough, this page says nothing about it at all.

 

Am I allowed to do this? Why the ____ does this have to be so artificially complicated? Whatever happened to trying to offer the best product you can at a competitive price?

[Bikerdude]

Elo LS

 

Its a little know fact that you can in fact do a clean install with the upgrade copies of windows 7. I only discovered this myself (and Im a computer engineer) a few weeks ago when rebuilding a pc for someone. So all you need to do is back up your data, wipe the harddrive and then install win7.

 

- Here is a link with the info needed

 

Btwe - you can't upgrade from win2000 to win7.

[lost_soul]

Also, feel free to laugh, but I put an ancient SB Live card in this new PC. I did it so I could have 3D sound in Dark Engine games under XP. If I do install Windows 7, I will lose that functionality unless I buy a new sound card... ugh

[i30817]

Never going back to windows.

[lost_soul]

Why the heck did I have to troll forums to find this? *orders upgrade pack for $105 used while he can)*

 

http://social.techne...c6-c3fa74a547d5

 

"I would hope it wouldn't, since the "double install" is how Microsoft told me to handle a Win2k upgrade. If, at some point, the Win2k machine that I'm upgrading gets flagged as non-genuine, I would be highly irritated. I have gotten confirmation from two different contacts in MS - the store, and an escalation person. Both assured me that this would allow me to upgrade from Win2k.

 

Now, the registry trick might result in a WGA flag down the road. I could see not recommending that technique - even if it is way more convenient than the double install."

Edited July 6, 2011 by lost_soul

[Serpentine]

I still don't understand why people use the upgrade packs etc, if you're a student: get a student copy; they're dirt cheap. If you're not a student: get an OEM copy of the full thing, its less than 30 usd more. Non-full upgrade installs are always shocking, you'll end up doing the clean install anyway, you'll spend more than $30 worth of time and ragey-ness in the process, if you do the clean install workaround in the first place, it's still annoying since you'll end up needing to use downloaded images later on anyway. Hell, just use a downloaded image to do the install and then swap in your key if you feel so moral. Personally I just have an OEM copy that I picked up for next-to-nothing when buying some RAM for a laptopn, and use the official pro images to build custom isos from.

[lost_soul]

I got Three upgrades for about $110... If you've got some XP boxes around, this is the best deal. I can upgrade my primary machine, my extra one that I will soon upgrade the hardware in, and possibly my netbook as well. I will have to investigate how well W7 would run on the netbook first though because it has 1 GB of RAM.

[lost_soul]

So I got Windows 7 and I'm using it now. I'm actually liking it a lot. Part of me wants to switch back to Windows as my day-to-day OS, keeping Linux for rare tasks. I especially like having a file manager that doesn't feel sluggish while opening folders with hundreds or thousands of compressed files in them. Nautilus in GNOME was always painfully slow.