My first post here at MDL! So, greetings everyone. I am laying down my upcoming nightmare under bullet points so it will be easy to understand. 1) In 2011 purchased Dell XPS8300 with Win7 home premium. Backed up a copy of the 500gb drive with Acronis Trueimage and validated its integrity. 2) January, 2012, purchased SSD, cloned original Win7 home premium installation to SSD 3) Upgraded to Win7 Pro with SP1. Wiped clean original 500GB hdd to store users files. Now ssd has system files, 500GB drive contains Users Documents/pictures etc. 4) 2013 December, now I am building new system and need to free up a Win7 license. 5) Recovery of XPS8300 from previously cloned Acronis image failed as it reports corrupted image. 6) Tried to downgrade Win7 pro to Home Basic by registry hack, no go. 7) Tried to use MDL updown tool to downgrade to Home Premium and upgrade using Home Premium disk gave error. It says the upgrade path will not work since my user directory and system directory not under same drive. Questions- 1) Can I temporarily move my user directory back in C:\ and will that installation will move forward? Another way to pharse my question, is it possible to use upgrade when I am using Home Premium SP1 to upgrade a system which already has Home Premium SP1. 2) If that fails, my only option is probably install Home premium freshly in XPS8300 with the ISO downloaded from digitalriver and activate using OEM COA. I believe I can use the Win7 Pro upgrade to key to use it in my new system considering I have several Vista license lying around. Does those license has to be Vista Pro? I believe I have license for Ultimate and Enterprise. Thanks for reading and another thanks in advance for your input.
Honestly, I have no idea what you are trying to do but I will take a guess.. Building a new machine and want to install Windows 7 on it. That I am sure. Right ? Why are you trying to access an old backup to clear up a Windows 7 key? Just use the key on the machine you have built, should activate no problem. Seeing as you have a DELL, ever thought about activating DELL OEM? It is a offline activation and last for ever.
I'd go with this and forgo all the other manipulations. Just seems far simpler to me. Backup all your user data first and then copy it back to your new installation. Activation method is your call; stay away from "hacktivations".
ATIH - It's my main backup, has never failed me, but ... when I make a backup image I copy it to a different drive. Then I copy it again to yet another drive. After I have the image file on three drives, I do the integrity check on the last copy. Does it take a lot of time? Yes. A little too extreme? I suppose so. Do I sleep at night? Take a guess