What happens when the RC finishes in March next year? The RC is the ultimate version, I've just preordered the Premium version so will I just have to enter a Product Key or will i need to reinstall W7 as it is not the same version? Andy

Andy:The ongoing message from Microsoft has always been the beta and RC are standalone installs and must be either reverted (if installed as an upgrade to Vista), or a fresh install of a genuine package to get back to XP.You will NOT be able to upgrade a beta or RC, your only option is a clean install with a (full) retail package, or to reinstall (or revert to) the previous genuineVista and upgrade from there. As before, the "upgrade" to XP needs to be a clean install anyway, so if you do reinstall XP in order to take advantage of an upgrade version of Windows 7 RTM or GA, don't bother with installing apps and tweaking everything the way you like it, all you need is a bare bones installation and activation (with genuine advantage I presume). Nothing has changed about this, Microsoft's instructions have been very clear about this all along.Hope this helps.DAS

Hi w7t,You'll have to doa clean install or upgrade another product than the 7RC because your preorder is a different version and second even ifit was the same version because the RC is not upgradable without workarounds which are not recommended, supported or in compliance with the evaluation license.

What happens when the RC finishes in March next year? The RC is the ultimate version, I've just preordered the Premium version so will I just have to enter a Product Key or will i need to reinstall W7 as it is not the same version? Andy Andy - As everyone's said - you will need to reinstall something (XP or Vista) prior to installing the Win 7 Upgrade. Be sure to back your files up FIRST! You can use the Windows Easy Transfer utility - BUT make sure you use the one on the retail DVD and NOT the one built into the RC.There are many reasons why you won't be able to just use the product key and be done with it. But there are four primary reasons:1.) You do NOT want to mix RC code with the final product. When the RC was released, Microsoft warned there would be "odd quirks" and the like - stuff they were NOT going to waste time and effort tracking down. The same will likely be true of the final version.2.) The Beta and RC use a different product key algorithm. The retail product key wouldn't work - even if you tried.3.) And this is the big one - You can't downgrade from Ultimate edition to any of the other "lesser" editions. You can go from Home Premium to Ultimate, but not the other way around. Microsoft isn't in the business of doing registry cleaning. The installer is designed to create a registry with known features. Removing stuff willy nilly can cause other apps and/or features to NOT work properly at all. 4.) The Windows 7 EULA requires that you upgrade from a full retail or OEM license. Since the RC is just an eval version and not retail nor OEM, it doesn't qualify. The Windows 7 installer for an upgrade MUST be run from within a legit version of Windows that's been activated and has passed WGA muster. From there it flags the hard drive as being legit, the machine reboots to the DVD and the installer finds the flag which then unlocks the ability to install an upgrade.

Cheers for your help guys. I formatted my HDD for W7RC and dont have an XP disk (it came on the pc) so i guess in november i'll be spending a day reformatting it and installing everything again. Cheers again.