As the title suggests, i was unaware that the beta had a downloading time limit. (yeah...i was "out of the loop")I have looked at websites claiming to have the W7 beta, but i am sure this is a scam and possibly illegal; and needles to say, I did not obtain a copy of it....i digressIs there still a way i could possibly obtain a copy of the OS from the Microsoft website?

Hi ecookman Unfortunately there is no way that you can obtain the official Microsoft version of Windows 7 at this time. The versions you mentioned are copies of interim, internal builds that have been leaked from different resources. These versionsare not supportedby Microsoft.Please see the following thread for more information about these leaked versions.Windows 7 Unauthorized VersionsRegards, Ronnie Vernon MVPForum Moderator

As Ronnie said, those ISOs are unsupported interim releases that aren't supported. But there's actually a better version for avoiding those downloads - that being you don't know where they've been. As we've seen in the news recently, a couple of pirated Mac packages (iLife and Adobe CS4) were tainted with malware. The good news is, on the other hand, there will be a release candidate that will be released soon. When that will be exactly, it's hard to say - especially since the recent events at the CanSecWest "Pwn2Own" contest where IE8 was exploited. Microsoft's crack team were there and have the exploit in hand... So they're probably gonna add that fix to the Win 7 RC mix. Stay tuned...

O.k...thanksJust to cover my bases... are these leaked versions legal, and will they deactivate after X number of days...thanks

ecookman - Are they legal...? Eh... I somehow doubt anyone is going to arrest you or anything for having a copy of them. Keep in mind that unless you've got access to the Win 7 Beta by way of Technet Plus, or MSDN or Connect, you're not going to get any sort of support. These are internal builds that are limited to those who are supposed to be testing them - not the general beta testing pool. They may have fixed an issue found in build 7000 but at the same time, they may have introduced OTHER bugs and issues - some of them could be worse than those in 7000. And yes, they WILL expire just like Build 7000. I'm not entirely sure what the drop dead date for newer builds will actually be. It could be August 1st like 7000 or some time after that.

lol not really worth it then is it...darn

No... Not really. Especially if you factor in that you don't know where these interim builds are being leaked from, who's hands they passed through, what modifications they may have made to the ISO - including nasty surprises in the form of a virus or other malware... It really doesn't seem like a good idea. It's better to stick the official builds.