My XP installation got hosed at home. It would not boot and it was neither the MBR nor the partition's boot loader, so I was going to have to repair all the drivers. I took the opportunity to install Windows7 on a new RAID1 volume on 2 new 1TB Barracudas. I got the upgrade retail box which says "All editions of Windows XP and Vista qualify you to upgrade." It seemed safest to unplug the old drive during the install. But this let me unable to activate Windows7 even after I plugged in the old drive (to copy over the old files). It seems that Windows7 wants to see the old installation (not just the old install media, as in the past) while it is installing if you want to use an upgrade product key.
Here is the solution I used; very easy:
Workaround 3: Clean Install and Activate Windows 7 with MediaBootInstall Registry Hack
- After booting up, ensure that no Windows Updates pending task which requires a system reboot to finish installing.
Tip: Normally, an orange-colored shield icon will be displayed next to Shutdown button in the Start Menu Power Button or at notification tray area if a restart is required.
If reboot is required, restart the computer to allow any pending updates is installed.
- Run Registry Editor (RegEdit).
- Navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE
- In the right pane, change the value data for MediaBootInstall from 1 to0.
Alternatively, just download and execute MediaBootInstall.reg to merge the value into registry.
- Open an elevated command prompt as administrator.
- Run the command below to reset Windows 7 activation status:
slmgr -rearm
- Reboot the computer.
- Run the Activate Windows utility (accessible from bottom section ofControl Panel -> System and Security -> System, or type Activate Windows into Start Search), type in the upgrade product key and activate Windows.
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good information.
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