How in the Tech

Performing clean install of Windows 7 with upgrade media

By Adam Myers ⋅ October 28, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Windows 7

Unless you’ve been on another planet as of late – or a Mac user, you are likely aware that Windows 7 has been released to the masses. While it is true that the majority of the Windows market never actually purchases a retail copy of Windows – rather it comes installed on their new computer, there are enthusiasts such as myself that purchase and upgrade to the latest release at the first moment possible.

In order to save some money many just buy the Upgrade version of Windows which they are legally entitled to use assuming they have a full retail copy of any version of Windows post 2000. However, installing the Upgrade copy requires a pre-existing install of Windows on your hard drive – which is often not the case as enthusiasts tend to format the disk and wipe it clean before installing. With Vista, it was possible to perform a clean install by installing Vista Upgrade twice – the first time to a blank hard drive and then once again over top of the previous Vista install. Cumbersome, but it did satisfy the populace.

Thankfully, Microsoft has made the clean install of Windows 7 with upgrade media a bit easier, or at least a faster success path. Many users, myself included, were able to perform a clean install on a blank hard drive and then activate without any problems. If by chance you are one of the unlucky ones you likely saw the 0xC004F061 error upon an activation attempt. If that is the case, Paul Thurrott has a workaround that I’m going to detail here.

From the clean install performed above ensure that you are fully patched from Windows Update.

Open regedit.exe from the Start Search box and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/

Change MediaBootInstall from 1 to 0 by double clicking on it.

Close out of regedit.exe and open an Administrative Rights Command Prompt – cmd in Start->Search, right-clicking and selecting Run as administrator.

In the Command Prompt window execute slmgr /rearm.

Reboot Windows and then try the Activation Utility once again. Your copy of Windows should now pass the activation process.