How to Direct In-Place Upgrade Windows 7 Beta or RC to Windows 7 RTM

Windows 7 does not support upgrade options from it’s previous releases such as Windows 7 beta and Windows 7 RC officially. In order to upgrade your system from earlier Windows versions to Windows 7 RTM, build version 7600.16385, you may refer to in-place upgrade option. However, upgrading your system with this option will make the system step up process start, but will stop at Compatibility Report section. You will get an error like below screenshot.

You cannot upgrade this pre-release version of Windows 7. Go online to see how to install Windows 7 and keep your files and settings.

It’s blocked upgrade path that does not allow in-place upgrade from Windows 7 pre-release versions. Microsoft advises to make a fresh installation of Windows 7 RTM without upgrading and to use Windows Easy Transfer to save and transfer user accounts, Windows settings, program settings, personal customizations and data files from previous installation to Windows 7 RTM. However, Windows Server 2008 R2, users can directly in-place upgrade from Windows Server 2008 R2 RC. But you can hack Windows 7 RTM installation DVD ISO and bypass the blockage and continue with in-place upgrade.

How to in-place upgrade Windows 7 Beta or RC to Windows 7 RTM

1. Download Windows 7 RTM ISO on to your computer first.
2. Mount ISO image onto a virtual DVD drive and copy whole contents of the image to a local folder
3. Navigate to the Source directory inside the extracted local folder
4. Search and open cversion.ini in a text editor such as Notepad or Crimson Editor
5. Locate the following part inside the file :

[HostBuild]
MinClient=7233.0
MinServer=7100.0

Replace the above values with the following ones

[HostBuild]
MinClient=7000.0
MinServer=7100.0

6. Save the changes you have made and close the text editor.
7. Now double click on setup.exe file and continue with the setup process. Choose Upgrade to in-place upgrade to latest RTM gold build of Windows 7
8. Version check will be bypassed and you can continue with the upgrade process
9. You are done.