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Possible Duplicate:
Windows 8 Pro Upgrade but no previous version of Windows installed

I have a legit Windows 7 installed on my C:\ SSD drive. I have about 10 gigs left of 80 gigs total. So I want to buy a new SSD drive and install Windows 8 on it.

Of course, I would prefer to pay only the upgrade price instead of the full price.

Is it possible? How? Is it legal?

[edit] I want to emphasize that the clean install is done on a new drive (I don't know if this change the outcome)

Community
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Thierry Roy
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2 Answers2

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I just purchased the upgrade, downloaded the files, copied to USB and did a clean install on my Windows 7 machine. I'm in the process of reinstalling my files, but had no problems installing from the upgrade. Though I had a legitimate copy of Windows 7 on the computer, Windows 8 did not bug me about the old media or old CD Key.

However, if your system does say that it cannot activate Windows 8 because you used an upgrade key, you can do the following to bypass this. Of course, this should only be done with legitimate situations.

  • Open regedit by pressing Windows-q, entering regedit and selecting the result from the list of hits.
  • Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/
  • Change MediaBootInstall from 1 to 0
  • Go back to the start screen and enter cmd there.
  • Right-click Command Prompt and select to run it as administrator.
  • Type slmgr /rearm on the command line and hit enter.
  • Reboot Windows now.
  • Run the activation utility afterwards, enter your product key to activate Windows.
kobaltz
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According to this article you can clean install using upgrade media, just make the DVD or USB drive and boot from it then choose "Custom" to perform a clean install, see section "Install by booting the PC with the Upgrade install media"

But then another member here on SU posted this article where it did not work.

I assume the difference might be the Thurrott article used a hard drive with a previous version of windows on it, I am thinking the new W8 setup can detect this?, but a blank hard drive causes it not to activate.

Another note, it appears the two articles used different types of media, downloaded vs purchased physical media, so this may be the reason.

Time will tell when more people experiment with using different types of upgrade media and write about their experiences.

Moab
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