I Bit Torrented my copy but no longer have the Torrent file or I'd send
it to you. Google can find it for you Also, here is some info I thought
the collective might be interested in. I followed these instructions and
they worked for me with RTM.
Use any version of Windows 7 free for 120 days
Woody Leonhard By Woody Leonhard
There's an easy way to stretch Windows 7's 30-day free-trial period to
120 days so you can determine whether Microsoft's new operating system
meets your needs.
Even better — if you know the secret — you can try out any version of
Win7, from Ultimate to the lowly Basic, using a single install disc.
It's fair to say that by now hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of
copies of Windows 7 sit on DVDs and hard drives all over the world. You
might have downloaded a copy of Win7 from the official sites: Microsoft
Developer Network, TechNet, or Software Advantage. Perhaps you hooked up
your machine to a torrent or a newsgroup site to download the new OS. Or
maybe you snagged a copy from your tech-savvy sister-in-law.
Whichever channel you use, if you don't already have a copy of Windows
7, you can easily put your paws on the installation bits and burn your
own install DVD. Just be sure what you downloaded is the real, shipping
version of Windows 7. One way to confirm this is to use a set of
checksum verification instructions found on Softpedia.
Getting a copy of Windows 7 is the easy part. The rub — and the place
where Microsoft makes its money — is the Win7 activation key. You're
expected to pay for the key, no matter how you obtained the software.
Microsoft allows anyone to install and use any version of Windows 7 for
30 days without having to enter an activation key. There are no strings
attached, and the operating system's performance is not degraded or
defaced during the trial.
Fortunately for us, the 30-day grace period can be extended up to three
additional times — to a total of 120 days — using a Microsoft-supplied
utility called the Software License Manager (slmgr). This tool
conveniently ships with Windows 7.
How to use slmgr to extend the free-trial period of Windows Vista was
first reported by WS editorial director Brian Livingston on Feb. 15,
2007. Because Windows 7 includes slightly different versions than Vista,
the procedure has some new wrinkles. Listen up.
How to extend Win7's trial to a full four months
In a nutshell: If you install Windows 7 and don't enter an installation
key, the 30-day activation clock starts. To see how many days you have
left, click Start, right-click Computer, and choose Properties. At the
bottom of the dialog under Windows Activation, you'll see the number of
days left in your trial period.
When that number gets perilously close to zero, you can extend the free
period another 30 days via the following steps:
* Step 1: Click Start, All Programs, Accessories. Right-click Command
Prompt and choose Run As Administrator. Enter your administrator password.
* Step 2: Type the following command and press Enter:
slmgr -rearm
Note the space after slmgr and the hyphen in front of rearm.
* Step 3: Restart Windows 7.
Once the OS restarts, the Properties dialog described above will
indicate that Windows 7's activation grace period has been reset to a
full 30 days.
You can run the -rearm trick a total of three times. If you perform a
-rearm at the end of each 30-day period, you end up with 120 days of
full, unfettered Windows 7 use without having to supply an activation
key in the interim.
How to install Win7 Ultimate now, pay less later
When the activation grace period runs out — whether it's in 30 or 120
days or somewhere in between — you need to feed Windows 7 an activation
key. That's when many Windows 7 customers will find themselves in trouble.
Let me clarify up front that the 32-bit and the 64-bit versions of
Windows take the same keys. A key that works for 32-bit Windows 7 Home
Premium also works for 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium. However, different
keys are required for Ultimate vs. Pro vs. Home Premium.
(I assume you won't want to install the exceedingly limited Windows Home
Basic, which is intended primarily for developing countries. And you
won't be installing Windows Home Starter, because you can't buy a key
for it. The Starter version is available only when preinstalled on a new
netbook.)
Say, for example, you install a free trial of Windows 7 Ultimate.
However, when the time comes to pay the piper, you want to shell out
your shekels only for Win7 Home Premium. (That's the version most
individual users will choose, and it's considerably cheaper than Win7
Ultimate — which isn't worth spending more for, as I see it.)
If you installed a trial of Win7 Ultimate without knowing the secret,
you're stuck. The Home Premium key won't activate an Ultimate PC. Your
only option is a complete reinstall of Windows using the version that
matches your bought-and-paid-for key — Home Premium, in this case.
The best solution is to install in the first place the version you
probably want to end up with. If you expect to pay for Windows 7 Home
Premium, you should install Windows 7 Home Premium. The same goes for
Windows 7 Professional, which is for use in corporate domains.
Fortunately, there's an easy way to install either Windows 7 Home
Premium or Pro from a Windows 7 Ultimate CD: simply delete a single
file. Hard to believe, but true.
Convert Win7 Ultimate to Pro or Home Premium
Here's the crux of the matter: If you put a DVD containing Win7 Ultimate
in your PC and run the installer — either by booting from the disc or
running the setup program from inside Windows — you end up with Win7
Ultimate. No surprises there.
However, if you first delete a tiny file named ei.cfg before making the
installation DVD, the Win7 installer will give you the choices shown in
Figure 1.
Windows 7 installer
Figure 1. Delete or rename ei.cfg before burning a Windows 7
installation DVD, and a menu then allows you to select which version to
install.
In fact, no matter which Win7 installation DVD you have — Ultimate, Pro,
or Premium — if you delete the ei.cfg file from the disc, you'll be
offered the same choices and can install any version of Windows 7.
At the moment, only a small number of people have received a physical
DVD containing Windows 7 Ultimate. Instead, most current Win7 users
downloaded an .iso file, which includes everything on the Windows 7
Ultimate DVD: boot settings, file-structure details, etc. You burn the
.iso file to a DVD. Then you either boot your PC from the DVD or run the
setup program within an older version of Windows to kick the Win7
installer into gear.
If you have a Windows 7 Ultimate .iso file, it's easy to delete ei.cfg.
First, get a 30-day trial version of the gBurner utility, which is
available from the program's download page at CNET's Download.com. Then
install and run gBurner, open the Windows 7 .iso file, and delete (or
rename) \sources\ei.cfg. Piece o' cake, although it can take 20 minutes
to save the altered .iso file.
You can then use either gBurner or Alex Feinman's ISO Recorder program
(available from Alex's site) to burn a version of the .iso file without
ei.cfg to DVD.
What if you do have a physical Windows 7 installation DVD, but you don't
have an .iso file? In that case, use either gBurner or ISO Recorder to
rip the DVD into an .iso file. Then follow the instructions above to
delete the ei.cfg file and burn a new DVD.
Get the right version of Windows 7 going now and you won't have to
reinstall it — or pay an exorbitant price — later.
(My thanks to all-around good guy Seth Bareiss for his help in
researching this topic.)
FORC5 wrote:
My server crashed so I thought I would go ahead and play with w7 some more, I
have RC but not rtm. Much difference ?
Anyone have a good link to RTM ?
My standby disk ppl finally gave me a release to beta test that works on all
versions of windows v or 7.
fp
