In the interest of serving my Weblog readers, I decided that I could not live another day without Windows 7. From a Dell XPS 420 with its preinstalled completely legitimate Windows Vista I purchased an upgrade to Windows 7. The software downloaded itself and installed after I answered a handful of questions that required a moderate amount of computer experience. When the machine rebooted for the last time, after about four hours of downloading and hard drive grinding, it demanded an authorization code, which the dialog box helpfully suggested might be on the side of the PC.
After bending down to the floor and flipping the PC on its front, I found a sticker on the back, printed in a font size that would be readable by the average teenager. I copied 25 letters and numbers from the sticker and then typed them into the dialog box. The code was “invalid”. I went back down to the floor and copied a second set of letters and numbers, these supposedly for the TV portion of the operating system. I typed these in. They were valid.
One question remained: if Microsoft could verify that the Windows Vista installation was authorized, how come it couldn’t transfer that over to the Windows 7 installation?
Usage report: Google Chrome works.
I solved the unreadable serial number in the sticker dilemma a while ago. What you do is grab a point and shoot with macro, take a few shots of the plate/sticker/whatever then just zoom it. It is very handy when arguing with Comcast on the phone because one of the cable boxes stopped working and they keep asking me for the weird codes at the back of the box.
Did you look for the code on the Windows 7 box or somewhere on the purchase receipt if there was no box?
Actually the slickest install for Windows is on a virtual machine with VMware. It asks you for the code and user name when you setup the virtual machine and it then creates the virtual machine, loads the OS, automatically answers any questions and when it boots up even the time zone is set to your host machine.
Tom: I bought my copy of Windows 7 online so there was no box. However, your comment inspired me to look more carefully at the multi-page confirmation email that Microsoft’s vendor sent me. There is indeed a product key there. Next time I’ll print it out prior to install (though I’m not sure why I should need to!).
I suspect that bringing the confirmation stuff into “meatspace” makes it harder to hack.
I think somewhere, someone is laughing hysterically knowing how many people get down on their knees, strain their eyes to see ridiculously small micro printing, all the while trying to copy that print while sneezing because you’ve just disturbed about a years worth of dust. That someone might also be a tad bit sadistic.
But I do agree with Pedro up there….take pics, upload and the place in a tidy little file folder for the next time you want to upgrade.
So….was is worth all of the time and effort? Is Windows 7 a step up. And why was it that so many peeps didn’t like Vista?
I mean really isn’t it all just like a video game. You finally beat all the levels and then what…upgrades just give us more battles to be victorious over.
All in all I think you were lucky that the whole thing didn’t delete because you didn’t get the code typed in fast enough or you needed more than one attempt.
I feel your pain. I once spent twenty minutes typing ‘6’ when I should have been typing ‘G’.
Phil,
Reading this reminded me of the pain I went through to install Vista in VMWare. I purchased it in Spain and was surprised to find that unlike OS X, all languages are not included on the installer. So I test our web applications in an Español IE environment. And I remember all the hoops I had to go through just to install the OS.
I decided not to create a password on my user account, and now Vista occasionally tells me it’s time to change my password from empty to empty. 🙂
Honestly, with such an elegant alternative as OS X, it’s hard for me to understand why someone would choose Windows.