How to upgrade your Windows 7 RC to Enterprise

Windows 7 doesn't allow you to do an upgrade over the release candidate version. There is however a quite simple way to fool the installer into doing just that.

Be carefull with registry editing, you can break your system.. anywayz, dont hold me responsible ;)

• Go to regedit  (start->run->regedit)
• Head over to the following key:
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version
• Change Ultimate with Enterprise in ProductName and EditionID

Note: the ultimate to enterprise trick actually just fakes that your under a corporate license, or not. You probably don't need to do that step if your not specifically upgrading to an Enterprise version of Win 7.


Now all we need to do is edit one file on the Windows 7 ISO. Do this either by copying it to harddisc and installing from there, or reburning it with our modified file.

• Open up the following file in your favorite text editor: \sources\cversion.ini
• Locate the minclient line, and change the version number behind that to 7100. (7100=rc 7000=beta)

Happy installs :)

sidenotes:

• you can't go from 32 to 64 bit this way (or reverse)

For all you people having fun with the upgrades, here's a little mood lifter out of Vista days, courtesy of ctrl-alt-del: