Microsoft has made it clear in the beginning that users who would install the beta release of Windows 7 would not be able to update to the Windows 7 release candidate. In other words: They had to perform a clean install of the Windows 7 Release Candidate. While the majority of users probably does not have a problem with that as the beta version of Windows 7 usually made its way on spare or test systems some users might have installed it on their main computer systems.
The official way of updating Windows 7 Beta to Windows 7 RC is the following:
- Starting with a data backup. This includes documents, multimedia files and any other data or files that got created by the user and need to be transferred to the new system. We would suggest to either copy the whole Windows 7 partition to a spare drive or be very careful when creating the backup.
- Using Windows 7 Easy Transfer to backup Windows 7 settings. Windows 7 Easy Transfer is part of Windows 7.
- Formatting the partition Windows 7 Beta was on.
- Installing Windows 7 release candidate
- Using Windows 7 Easy Transfer to restore the settings of Windows 7 Beta
- Reinstalling any third party applications that are needed on the computer system
- Restoring data from the previously created backup to the computer system
That’s a long process which can take hours or more depending on the data and third party applications that need to be reinstalled. The release candidate will block the direct update from Windows 7 Beta to it. Users who want to give it a try can follow Microsoft’s “emergency” tips for performing a direct update from beta to rc (read: Windows 7 Beta To RC Upgrade Instructions). A data backup is highly recommended before starting that process.
If you run a pre-RC build of Windows 7: How will you update to the Windows 7 Release Candidate? Let us know in the comments.
