Windows 7 Beta now available

They should have given you a Product Key before downloading, that's all you'll need.

I got the x86 iso, any idea how to get activation key?
thanks,

Click the download at the bottom of this page, and you will be re-directed to the page with the keys

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...-download.aspx

I’m making progress and learning as I go. I found out that just burning the ISO file to a DVD won’t make it boot. I downloaded and used Ashampoo Burning Studio to create my DVD with the image file. I could only get 15.2 GB of space allocated for the dual boot on my drive C: even though it has 226GB of available space and I reduced my shadowsize to 2GB, but it was enough to install Win-7 and the dual boot works.

My problem now is how to access all of my Vista installed applications (Word, Excell, etc.) that are on the C: drive. When I boot my Win-7, I am assuming that it only sees the C: drive as the allocated portion (partition?) where it’s installed. To simplify matters, since I didn’t know how to access my Norton 360 to in stall it here, I downloaded and installed AVG anti-virus to protect the disk for my Win-7 testing.

I have a 2nd hard drive connected via USB. On it are backups of all of my documents, downloads, etc. I can access anything on that drive from Win-7, but I can’t open a Word document as it can’t find the Word application on the “Vista” C: drive. This limits my testing ability of Win-7.

Any suggestions?

BTW, when booting, the Win-7 gets to the desktop screen in half the time it takes Vista to get there.

Either Windows will only access the drive's they are told to access, a.k.a. their primary partitions.

Even if you could access the Vista drive, I'm fairly sure programs on it wouldn't work because they are not properly installed into the Windows 7 Registry.

The safest workaround would be to just re-install the programs on Windows 7.

Thanks...that's how I had it figured...just wondered if there was another way. I have a 120 GB hard drive in an external USB box that I use for backup of my files, desktop, links, etc.. And, I have another older 40 GB hard drive that I can put inside my PC case or in the USB box in place of my larger one for testing WIN-7. I may install the 3rd drive and install some applications on it while in Win-7. If I eventually upgrade to the released version, I can still use the applications on it.

I'm in trouble again. Earlier I said that I had set up a portion of my primary disk (Drive C and installed Windows 7 on it. When booting, I had the choice of Vista or Win7. But, when in Win7, I could not access anything on the C: drive. So...

I installed an old 40 GB hd on my PC. My primary HD is a sata 360 gb. Once installed, each time i booted it got disk failure errors at startup saying a disk had failed, but when i hit f2 it went ahead and booted and I had both HDs available and accessable in Vista.

I installed Windows 7 on my 40 GB hd. Then, when it was totally installed, when I boot, the BIOS does not see my 360 GB hd, only the 40 GB hd and my choice of booting from Vista is gone. When Win7 is loaded, I can see the drive C: but cannot access anything on it. When booting from Drive C:, I can access the 40 GB drive, whi can't it work in reverse?

What do I do now? How can I get the BIOS to see the 360 drive again? How can I get permission to access my C: drive when booted in Win7 from the 40GB hd which is now drive J:?

Do I have any option other than removing the 40 GB hd from my PC? How do I unisnstall the Win7 from it before removing it? How do I uninstall Win7 from the allocated portion I first installed it on?

I would love to continue using Win7 but I have to be able to get to my applications and documents on the C: drive.

Weird things are happening to my PC. Since posting the last message, several things have taken place.

First, I managed to obtain access rights to my Drive C:…that is, to the documents and program files. But, I still cannot access my user folder “Dale”, but can access the “Public” user folder. Maybe I can just copy my user stuff to the public folder (see the rest below as to how I can do that)...thank goodness I still remember how to use DOS. Next, the program Winword.exe won’t run. I get a message saying to install the application. But, I can run some other applications such as my Canon PhotoStudio.

OK…next, on rebooting, I found that my primary hard drive showed up in the BIOS again, and I set it to the first drive in the boot priority order. But I still had only two boot choices…Windows 7 on either the allocated portion of my 360 gb hd, or Windows 7 on the newly installed 40 gb hd.

Then, trying to install AVG antivirus , I got a blue screen crash message. On reboot, the automatic fix would not fix the problem and shut the system down again. I rebooted again in normal mode. This time, all three OS choices showed during startup and I am back up in Vista.

At this point, I would like to remove one Windows 7, the one on the allocated portion of my HD. Can I do this? If I can, I’ll go from there, trying Win7 again on the 40 gb hd. If I still have problems, I’ll disconnect the drive from the MB and forget about Windows 7 until the release is available to buy.