When I grabbed a copy of the Windows 7 Beta as it was first released onto the web I didn’t anticipate any real problems with the inevitable upgrade path to the RC or the final release. Well silly me because Microsoft for some reason update the Beta once during the cycle and then said anyone with the Beta 7000 build would have to do a fresh install of the RC of Windows 7.

Needless to say I wasn’t overly impressed when I read this but thankfully Ed Bott came to the rescue with one of his great posts to show us silly people the way out of the darkness of Beta hell. In his post on May 1st Ed gave a good rundown of what to expect in the RC release setup and part of that post included a way to upgrade from the Beta Build 7000.

The specific part of his post is here but if you’re in a hurry here’s the short form

But if you insist on doing the upgrade anyway, there’s a workaround. Start by copying the entire contents of the Windows 7 DVD to a local folder (use a bootable USB drive, or create a folder in the root of the drive you’re planning to upgrade, and then run Setup from that location).

In the folder you just created, open the Sources subfolder and then open the file Cversion.ini in a text editor like Notepad.

Change the MinClient value (highlighted in yellow above) to 7000 and save the file in the same location with the same name.

You can now run Setup without being bothered by the version check.

I can attest that the work-around does indeed work as I am happily running Windows 7 Release Candidate – Build 7100. So give this a try if you are running the Build 7000 version of the Beta and if it works for you make sure to give Ed a high five.

Thanks Ed, you saved me from getting more gray hairs than I already have – or need.