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I’d try a hack, but please image first! I don’t know if this will break things.
The hack: there are a couple places in the registry that the Windows 7 version is listed. Use regedit and change these from Home to Pro; then do a in-place ‘upgrade’ to Pro. Don’t boot off the install DVD, that will not work for an upgrade. Afterwards, activation will likely fail, that’s the time to go to System/Properties and enter your purchased Pro key.
I have used the above to upgrade from Pro to Enterprise a couple of times; too lazy to start from scratch, and I didn’t want to lose the installed programs. Worked fine. But Enterprise is very close to Pro, whereas Home is not. Thus the image first warning.

Thanks, this sounds interesting.
Not sure I feel gutsy enough to change registry items; has anyone else done this particular hack successfully?
I am always amazed by the level of detailed knowledge on this forum. 🙂

rstew

Do you not fancy Win 10 ?

Thorny question.
I have one machine with the free upgrade to W10 loaded up and operating. I have dabbled with it a couple of times, but to be honest it has not been given a fair shot.
I just like and prefer the way W7 handles for now, only because it is a known playing field.
I guess I am a person who resists change purely for the sake of change. Meaning I don’t see enough of an advantage to W10 to want to go there just yet.
This could all change one day in the not-too-distant future. 🙂 Never say never.

rstew

Don’t know for sure.
The Seagate disk wizard imaging software indicates that it can recover all or select files and folders to the original or other machines.
We shall see how that translates to the real world I guess.

The current machine is one I built about a year and a half ago for home office duties. It is pretty fast and works quite well. It has two 1TB HDD’s; one of which is strictly for backups and imaging. My mistake was only loading Win7 HP. I should have loaded Pro at the onset, but that would have been too simple.
Now I find that I am restricted to backing up to only local drives, and I want to be able to back up to any machine on the LAN, including a server.

rstew

Sudo;
I may give that a try.
Earlier it was suggested that I may have to do a fresh install of Pro and reload everything.
That will be painful so I don’t think I’ll bother with that.
I have at least one spare machine with Pro x64 already loaded so I’ll just likely switch over to that. I’ll move the current backup image drive over to it then hopefully be able to recover everything needed from there. Way more tedious than a simple upgrade, but so be it.

rstew

So I still can’t figure out why I can’t upgrade my Win7 HP x64 to Win7 Pro x 64.
In the past I have done similar upgrades with the machine booted to the OS, but this time I get the no can do message.
Anyone got any other ideas that might be worth trying?

rstew

Have a look at that Properties page again and you’ll see the OS at the top of the page, which was what Joe wanted you check.

Here is the whole screen (except the Windows product ID at the bottom):
46210-Basic-System-Info-12-13-16

It is exactly what I thought it was.

rstew

The pic in Post #8 shows quite clearly that it is Win 7 Home Premium SP1 and the memory is showing as 8GB – a 32 bit system would only recognize a max of 4GB.

Here is a snip of the system information screen, as suggested.
46209-System-Info-12-13-16

rstew

Adding to all this is the recent announcement from Microsoft that they have stopped distribution of Win7 and Win8/8.1, only those still in the supply channels or installed on computers already assembled, on-the-shelf, are allowed to be sold.

So that probably means there won’t be any more W7/W8.1 licenses for sale either one supposes. Man, you just gotta love progress! We are getting W10 stuffed down our throats whether we want it or not. :o: MS are doing everything possible to close the door on any Windows version prior to 10.
I get this nasty suspicion that MS is up to something that they are not telling us about.

rstew

cmptrgy;
Thanks for that link; very neat site.
I joined up just so as to get their info stream. :rolleyes:

rstew

Maybe because servers are expected to be housed in an Air Conditioned environment?
30 W seems like a big draw in an ‘off’ state, is this really a reasonable amount for stand by? I will get out my clamp on Ammeter one of these days and do a survey…
:cheers:

I don’t know whether it’s reasonable or not, but 25-30 watts is what it is for an HP DL380 G5 with 2 psu’s installed. :rolleyes:
And installed in an A/C environment or not, if you have say 4 or 6 1U or 2U servers stacked in a rack in standby mode (no air circulating through them) consuming this kind of power, it seems to me they are going to get pretty hot with all that heat rising from unit to unit.
I’d be interested in your survey none the less.

rstew

cmptrgy;
Here is a snip attached from System Info. It clearly shows to be an x64 system.
46205-System-Info-Snip-12-12-16

This was installed using a non-OEM W7 HP x64 SP-1 DVD purchased about 2 years ago.

The new W7 Pro x 64 product key was purchased locally from a reputable source and is known to be valid. The install DVD was burned from a downloaded ISO file some time ago, and I have used it before.
But what difference does all this make? The screen popup shown in my OP occurs right after the “accept license terms and conditions screen”, way before any loading of files actually starts, and way before the point where it asks to register and activate.

rstew

Win 7 Anytime Upgrade was a feature where you could upgrade from within Windows but is no longer available.

Without checking my Win 7 laptop, I think it is still listed in All Control Panel Items.

When I researched your problem because I thought the way you were doing it was the way to go, I came across a Google link where one helper suggested that OP would get the same message you had – so it looks like you’re stuck with a clean install.

When I searched for Anytime Update I found the same thing. MS discontinued it for some reason. I did find lots of iffy sounding sites that indicated they could generate Win 7 product keys and similar. Looked like good places to stay away from to me. The usual “Fix Windows Fast” and “Fix Missing Windows Drivers” links. Been there, done that.

rstew

Both versions are most definitely 64 bit. I know a change to 64 bit from 32 bit requires a clean install.

Are you using a Windows 7 Pro product key?
Does the Windows 7 Anytime Upgrade work?

This message pops up just after starting the upgrade process. No where near the point of putting in the product key, but Yes I have a valid Pro 64 bit product key.
I don’t know what Win 7 Anytime upgrade is?

rstew

I reckon it’s because you made it active so Macrium thinks it’s a system disk.
Delete the partition and re-create it without making it active.

cheers, Paul

I wondered about that. So I deleted the partition, then reformatted it as a non active partition. It now shows as Healthy Partition. Guess what; still no joy with Macrium. it can’t find D: as a destination drive. I clicked on the 3 dots per Browni’s suggestion and that only shows folders on the C: drive as options. Yippee.
(It is an image I am trying to create; not a disk to disk copy.)

Then I uninstalled this new version of Macrium 5.3.7310 and installed the Jan 2015 version 5.3.7256 just in case. Still no joy; exactly the same as the newer version.
So I am done fiddling with Macrium. It just won’t play nicely no matter what.
I will stick with Seagate Disk Wizard which at least seems to do what I need.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions.
Over and out.
rstew

So as requested here is a snip from Disk Manager showing the two drives after merging the partitions and reformatting D: Looks pretty clean, right?
46196-Disk-Manager-Snip

And here is a snip from Macrium as I tried to set up an image backup to D:. D: drive only appears as a source drive; never as a destination option for some reason. And the reason it now shows as having data on it is that I finally got sick of messing with Macrium and used Seagate Disk Wizard to create an image, using its backup option. Way more user friendly. It also allows incremental backups daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Now, would it work if I needed it to restore from? Who knows? Hopefully.
46197-Macrium-Snip

Anybody got any idea what’s going on with Macrium? This is the latest update version by the way. Maybe they have removed the option to image to a HDD for the free version?

rstew