Saturday 19 March 2011

How to install Win7 Ultimate now, pay less later

When the activation grace period runs out — whether it's in 30 or 120 days or somewhere in between — you need to feed Windows 7 an activation key. That's when many Windows 7 customers will find themselves in trouble.

Let me clarify up front that the 32-bit and the 64-bit versions of Windows take the same keys. A key that works for 32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium also works for 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium. However, different keys are required for Ultimate vs. Pro vs. Home Premium.

(I assume you won't want to install the exceedingly limited Windows Home Basic, which is intended primarily for developing countries. And you won't be installing Windows Home Starter, because you can't buy a key for it. The Starter version is available only when preinstalled on a new netbook.)

Say, for example, you install a free trial of Windows 7 Ultimate. However, when the time comes to pay the piper, you want to shell out your shekels only for Win7 Home Premium. (That's the version most individual users will choose, and it's considerably cheaper than Win7 Ultimate — which isn't worth spending more for, as I see it.)

If you installed a trial of Win7 Ultimate without knowing the secret, you're stuck. The Home Premium key won't activate an Ultimate PC. Your only option is a complete reinstall of Windows using the version that matches your bought-and-paid-for key — Home Premium, in this case.

The best solution is to install in the first place the version you probably want to end up with. If you expect to pay for Windows 7 Home Premium, you should install Windows 7 Home Premium. The same goes for Windows 7 Professional, which is for use in corporate domains.

Fortunately, there's an easy way to install either Windows 7 Home Premium or Pro from a Windows 7 Ultimate CD: simply delete a single file. Hard to believe, but true.

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