What I’d like to know is if my current Windows 7 RC version (which expires on March 1, 2010) will upgrade smoothly to the RTM. I hope so.
No, unfortunately it won't. I don't have the reference from Microsoft in front of me, but I recall reading about a week ago, that if you've been running anything prior to the official RTM, it's a complete re-install.
I've got half a dozen machines in that state, ugh. Oh well. It's not a surprise -- beta testers should always be prepared for such inconvenience.
hah! Forget the naysayers. You CAN upgrade an RC, or even BETA, Windows 7 to the final public RTM build.
For those who have Windows 7 Release Candidate or Windows 7 Beta installed on their computers, you’ve been told that you are unable to upgrade your current pre Windows 7 RTM build: 7600.16385 to Windows 7 RTM...
I have GOOD NEWS for you!
Normally, you’ll get an error message saying you can’t upgrade. The reason is because Windows 7 RTM is programmed to reject all previous versions of 7233. Well fear not, there’s something you can do to bypass this crazieness, just follow these steps to upgrade from Windows 7 RC or Beta to Windows 7 RTM build: 7600.16385:
1. First you need to extract Windows 7 RTM ISO Image file to any folder or USB Disk using WinRAR, or the utility of your choice.
2. Now, go to the source folder, and use your text editor (notepad) to open “cversion.ini” file.
3. Change the “MinClient” build number to a value lower than the down-level build. For example, change 7233 to 7000.
The default content cversion.ini:
[HostBuild]
MinClient=7233.0
MinServer=7100.0
This is how the cversion.ini file contents should look like after changing:
[HostBuild]
MinClient=7000.0
MinServer=7100.0
4. After you finish changing it, you need to save the updated file in the same location and then run the setup.exe to start Windows 7 RC Upgrade process.
5. Now, you get an installation screen and you can choose which Windows 7 version you want to upgrade: Either the RC or Beta version.
I’ve tried this on the bootleg RTM that’s going around, and it does work. Hopefully a corporate type FReeper with a leagl RTM will do the same and report back???