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Activating Win 7 Home Premium on a Pro install...

garethrobinson1

garethrobinson1

garethrobinson1

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Sorry if this has been asked before but I can't find a definitive answer anywhere...

I've bought and installed Windows 7 Professional on my own PC. My brother is going to buy Windows 7 Home Premium next month, but I was wondering if I could install my copy of Windows 7 Professional on his PC now and then not activate it initially until his copy of Home Premium arrives. And then when it does arrive, activate it with the Home Premium key...

Would that work? Or do you have to use the same versions to do this? I'm thinking this probably isn't possible and he'd probably have to just wait until he gets Home Premium, but any advice would be gratefully appreciated!
 
When you install you will be asked to put in you key.
When it does this DONT, tell it you will activate later and it should give you a popup and ask you which version (HP,PRO,ULT) you want to install.
Pick Home Premium and install :D
You will get 30 days grace and then the OS will lock you out untill you activate it.
 
Venares said:
When you install you will be asked to put in you key.
When it does this DONT, tell it you will activate later and it should give you a popup and ask you which version (HP,PRO,ULT) you want to install.
Pick Home Premium and install :D
You will get 30 days grace and then the OS will lock you out untill you activate it.
Click to expand...

Does the final release lock you out? In the RC I kept just getting a pop up saying I needed to activate now or be sent to hell. I just clicked on "Cancel" and it went into windows after it notified me I could be using a dodgy copy.

I eventually got bored of the popups and entered a serial key, but it still let me in after 30 days. I assumed it had just changed since the XP days where it would lock you out completely.
 
Nope, I'm afraid that won't work. You can't use the key for a specified edidtion which is different to the one you already have installed.

However, if you would like to get your brother up and running as soon as possible, you can do the following - If you insert your Windows 7 DVD into the DVD drive and then open up the contents of the Windows 7 disk. Then copy the entire contents of the Windows 7 DVD over to a USB drive. Once the contents has been copied over, open up the USB drive and navigate to the "sources" folder. Then find a file called "ei.cfg" and delete it.

Once you have done the above, if your restart your system and boot from the USB drive, once you enter the Window 7 setup, a couple of steps in, it will ask you which edition of Windows 7 you would like to install. Then, just choose Home Premium.

If you're unable to boot from the USB drive after you have copied the contents of the Windows 7 DVD, if you follow this guide here, you should then be able to defiantly boot from your USB drive.

Venares said:
*Snip*
Click to expand...

I'm afraid that won't work. The installer doesn't ask the user to enter their key till after Windows has installed, during the process of naming the very first user account and by which time, you have already installed the default Windows 7 edition.
 
Darn, so they have changed it since Vista/2008.
Well that kinda sucks, nice fix there though Fire :D
Dont realy understand why they've done this though, surely this makes it more exspensive to produce since they now have to press 3 disc's instead of one.
 
There is a patch that will simply softmod out the ei.cfg entry in the iso if you img burn the dvd to an iso image then simply burn the iso to a dvd for your bros pc and follow Fire Wizard's post above.

Have a search, I am sure I posted it in the RTM days.

Will save you fumbling with usb booting and whatnot :)
 
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