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Windows 7 student upgrade HELP

ben, I am trying your method now. it is very similar to the method that jamin100 suggested earlier, which was a no-go. but i will report back on the method you suggested, setting up a parallels machine.

Edit: HEY! That method actually got me into the install process. I'll report back if/when it finishes. fingers crossed!
 
bozz2006 said:
ben, I am trying your method now. it is very similar to the method that jamin100 suggested earlier, which was a no-go. but i will report back on the method you suggested, setting up a parallels machine.

Edit: HEY! That method actually got me into the install process. I'll report back if/when it finishes. fingers crossed!
Click to expand...

WooHoo!

I was reading through the prior posts before I submitted that link, noticed the "similar" method, but this one seemed more straight forward. Glad to know its gotten you farther.

I'll have to jump on the student price soon. I have a Vista 64-bit boot camp installation that I run via VM Fusion 2. Vista is on a dedicated hard drive, but i rarely use it, so i might just go to a true VM and use that hard drive in my RAID array...
 
After following the suggestion of you posted, ben, install was pretty straightforward. I made sure to select custom install and not upgrade. as upgrade just wouldnt work. But as Jamin stated, windows can be fooled. He said:

jamin100 said:
1) install W7 with NO serial number - let it complete until you have a usable desktop. When it prompts you for the key just leave it blank.
2) FROM WITHIN W7 run the setup.exe from the DVD
3) install W7 AGAIN this time as an upgrade
4) once installed activate using your upgrade serial as normal.

This is exactly what i did last night and it all worked and activated fine.

Hope this helps
Click to expand...

Just make sure that with the suggestion that benborman posted that your directory paths are all correct. all the paths in the example are to the C: drive so make sure to put all the folders in there, don't just leave them on the desktop. And this "fooling" windows worked! Product key was accepted upon the "upgrade" install and activation was successful!
 
bozz2006 said:
After following the suggestion of you posted, ben, install was pretty straightforward. I made sure to select custom install and not upgrade. as upgrade just wouldnt work. But as Jamin stated, windows can be fooled. He said:



Just make sure that with the suggestion that benborman posted that your directory paths are all correct. all the paths in the example are to the C: drive so make sure to put all the folders in there, don't just leave them on the desktop. And this "fooling" windows worked! Product key was accepted upon the "upgrade" install and activation was successful!
Click to expand...

I was able to get it to work with this method as well. I did notice, however, that the install was about 10gb. Seems to be a bit large. Is that right?
 
I got Win 7 Pro 64-bt running on my Latitude D620, even though the MSFT tech from India told me it would not work. I guess he was giving up after 3 hours on the phone with me (what morons they have there, unbelievable!) and this was the way of getting me off his back (claiming all my problems were due to getting the wrong version).

Now I have an interesting question. When prompted for the key, I did not enter it and clicked next. The installation continued and everything seems to be working just fine, with no sign of a nag message telling me I have so many days to activate. I checked in the Windows toolbar and there is no activation icon anywhere. Does this mean I'm good to go, i.e. can I install on my Mac Pro (preferable Fusion VM) without running into activation problems?
 
No, I believe after 30 days you will either be forced to enter the key or you'll be locked out. that's the behavior that I got, same as you. That's where the "second" install comes in.
 
bozz2006 said:
No, I believe after 30 days you will either be forced to enter the key or you'll be locked out. that's the behavior that I got, same as you. That's where the "second" install comes in.
Click to expand...


Not sure what you mean by "second install". Does installing W7 on top of istelf as an upgrade make it possible to do multiple installs (on different computers) with the same key?
 
I don't know. what I meant by 'second install' was installing the upgrade on a clean drive or partition without the key, then 'upgrading' that install by installing W7 over top of it, this time entering the product key, as I detailed in one of my posts last night. I must have misunderstood your earlier question, and given you an answer to a question you didn't actually ask:p

I was talking about using the downloaded Windows 7 home premium upgrade, and being able to install it clean. This is what I did, as the only windows I have is XP-32.
 
It appears that you aren't limited to purchasing just one license. I have two macs and I want Win7 for both, so I headed back to the site and tried again. It accepted my email address again, no problem. So, $60 for two computers ain't bad.
 
I also have the student Professional win 7 upgrade. I have it running in bootcamp and Fusion. The only real problem is the bluetooth under bootcamp, that and during the install windows did something to my motherboard and my os x wouldn't start up for about 35 minutes. I finally got it back but had no USB or Bluetooth (no keyboard) but wifi and screen sharing worked. Had crazy errors (hundreds) in the logs under console.

Everything is fine now and it is back up and running better than ever. If you consider windows 7 to improve a mac otherwise I actually made it worse.

I did not follow the method in this thread. I actually downloaded Vista 64 (that probably caused all the problems, vista sucks) and installed that with no license than just ran the win 7 upgrade over the unactivated Vista (got the idea from user Dark Dragoon). I had errors making the upgrade files but uninstalling the bootcamp services monitor in vista fixed that. Once the install worked and Windows 7 was up and running in bootcamp I switched to the mac for Fusion. All I had to do to get fusion to work was trash the bootcamp files in /Users/*insert_your_username*/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/Boot Camp. After that launch VMWare Fusion and set up the bootcamp machine again.
 
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