There is no possible upgrade from XP to 7. When you install 7 from XP at a stage of the process, it will reboot, format your system hard drive (hope you did two partitions, system and datas!) and copy 7 files.
So, you’re the owner of an XP licence and a 7 upgrade licence. For whatever reason, you need to install 7 on a new drive (I assume your XP was not oem – if we speak about legality). Will you really need to go through the hassle of installing XP just for win 7 installer erase it?
You must know that it is possible to do a clean install of win 7 from an uprade dvd as it is the same as the full version disc. But your upgrade serial number won’t activate if a previous registered version of windows is not found… so? here is this little procedure:
* Install win 7
* Turn all internet connection off and avoid update through Microsoft Update
* Go to the registry : Start-> run-> regedit
* Go to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/
* Set MediaBootInstall from 1 to 0
* Close regedit
* Go to start and type “cmd” to show the command line icon. Right click on it and select “Run as administrator”
* In the command line window, type: « slmgr /rearm » then press enter
* Reboot the computer and win 7 is loaded, launch the activation program. Type your serial and activate win 7
As this allows to activate an upgrade licence without owning a previous licence, Microsoft may block this in the future. (it would be quite fair and legit).
