Recently, I had an issue where I had my computer with Windows XP on it, and I wanted to upgrade it to Windows 7. Well, you are allowed to do that, but you need to have your Windows XP CD key with you, in order to do it. I did not have mine, so I had to figure out a way to upgrade to Windows 7 without my CD key. It is actually a pretty easy process, with just switching a few things around in the registry. I am going to give you 3 different ways that you can easily upgrade to Windows 7 without using a Windows CD key. Note that the upgrade to Windows 7 costs a lot less than the whole Windows 7, by itself. So therefore, I did not want to spend any extra money on buying a whole new operating system.
So, here is the first way that you can do this. I call it the “double install method”. Boot up your computer and then put the Windows 7 CD in it. Choose the Run option that comes up, and when the setup boots up, choose Upgrade. Windows 7 will install as it did before. Because you are upgrading, you don’t have to insert a user name and password from the previous version. Once you’re finished installing Windows 7, go down to your start menu, and type in “activate” in the start menu, and that should bring up the activate windows utility. You just have to insert your product key into there and it should activate windows. If that does not work, then you can try another few methods I am going to mention.
For this method, you insert the Windows 7 Upgrade into your DVD drive. Reboot the computer, and boot off your DVD drive. Follow the steps to install Windows 7. Make sure to back up anything that you have on your computer. If this is a first time install, then you should not have to worry that much about that. After you install Windows 7, you should reboot your computer. Next, you would want to run Windows Update, to make sure that your computer is fully up to date with Windows newest updates and patches. Make sure to keep rebooting when it tells you to, and keep updating until there are no more updates available. After that, type in activate in the Start Menu, which brings up the Activate Windows utility. Next, insert the product key into your and it should activate windows. If it works, you are all set to go. You should receive something that says “Activation was successful” followed by “Activation helps verify your copy of Windows is genuine. With a genuine copy of Windows 7, you are eligible to receive all available updates and product support from Microsoft.” If you receive that message, then you have completed it successfully. If you do get a code error that says something similar to “The following failure occurred while trying to use the product key: Code: 0xC004F061 Description: The Software Licensing Service determined that this specified product key can only be used for upgrading, not for clean installations.” Then you should contact Microsoft and explain your problem to them, or you can try the last and final method.
This is my favorite way to fix this problem. It is not looked up upon by Microsoft, because if someone wanted to just buy the upgrade, instead of buying the whole Windows 7, then they could do that. If you are reading this, then you should only do this if you have a legitimate copy of Windows that you had before, and you are actually upgrading it. This workaround, to my knowledge, has a 100 percent success rate as well. First off, you should go to your start menu, and click Run. Once you have that opened, run regedit.exe. It should open a program called Registry Editor. Click on “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE”, then “Software”, followed by “Microsoft”, then “Windows”, then “CurrentVersion”, then “Setup”, then “OOBE”. Once you have that opened, you should have “MediaBootInstall”, “RetailInstall”, “SetupDisplayedE”, and “SetupDisplayedL”. Double click on “MediaBootInstall” and then a little window should open up. When that opens, look at “Value data:”, and change the 1 to a 0. After you do that, close out of Registry Editor. Next, open up your start menu, and type in “cmd” in the Start Menu. Make sure to right click on the short cut that pops up for “cmd”, and choose “Run As Administrator “. In the command prompt line, type “slmgr /rearm” and then press “Enter”. You should get a message that says “Command completed successfully. Please restart the system for changes to take effect.” Then, close the command line windows and reboot your system. When Windows 7 reboots, go to start and type in “Activate”, and run the Activate Windows Utility. Type in your product key, and you should be good to go. If this does not work, make sure that there are no pending Windows Updates to install. Some of those cause the method to fail, so install them and reboot the PC. Then re-run the command line and everything, and hopefully it should work out. If it does not work, then you should just resolve with calling Microsoft about it, and hopefully they will give you an activation key.
Any of the methods that I have just explained usually work for everyone. If resolve to doing the registry method, then please make sure that you are following the directions exactly how I say them. The directory for the registry edit is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/ Software/ Microsoft/ Windows/ CurrentVersion/ Setup/ OOBE/. Please only attempt the final method if you truly are a valid and licensed owner of a previous Windows version. Also, note that Microsoft has great support, whether it is through the phone’s or online, so never hesitate to give them a call. They can do amazing things through their support, which is extremely user friendly and help users out quite a bit.
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