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I currently am running Windows 7 RC (Build 7100) 2 and want to make the jump to Windows 7. I was looking at the Windows 7 Home Premium Family pack and from what I understand it is identical to the Windows 7 Home Premium DVD, just with three licenses, correct?

Anyway, my computer came with Windows XP Home SP2, which I would assume is OEM, I have a Dell OS reinstallation disk, which, as far as I can tell is just the Windows XP CD with a different label, and that it doesn't ask for a CD-key.

Would I be able to perform a clean install with the Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack media? Would it simply ask for (and accept) my OEM disk, or would I have to reinstall XP first before I perform the clean install (I read somewhere that the upgrade editions look for previous versions of Windows on your hard drive), or would it view my existing RC2 install as a previous version?

Is this even possible?

Thanks

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2 Answers

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Windows 7 won't ask for your old media to do a clean install with upgrade media. You need to either install Windows XP and then upgrade (which will force you to choose a clean install) or you need to follow the directions on Paul Thurrott's site on how to clean install using upgrade media.

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Thanks Steve.. :) Will check out the instructions :) – krebstar Nov 11 '09 at 8:09
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XP asked for the previous version CD (and so did many earlier versions of Windows). But Vista and Windows 7 must have the upgrade started from within a working version of Windows. That should include the RC (there was no RC2) of Windows 7. (Installing from the RC of Win7 should not upgrade - it should do a clean install. In order to do an upgrade, you'd have to hack Windows or the CD (I don't remember - and frankly, I don't recommend it).

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Hmm I thought this was RC2 (build 7100).. Anyway, thanks, I did not want to do an "in-place" upgrade, I wanted to do a clean install, but the way I've always done it was to boot off the optical media and reformat. So just to clarify, the upgrade (not in-place, i mean Win7RC -> Win7 RTM license) will not start by booting of the optical media, only by running the autorun or whatever in a previous version of Windows? – krebstar Nov 11 '09 at 6:53
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