If you have a MSDN or TechNet-Plus subscription, you probably know that today the downloads for the latest version of the Windows client operating system were released.

Windows 7 comes in a number of flavours, targeted/marketed at different audiences.  Starter (for NetBooks and the like), Home Basic (for emerging markets), Home Premium (the primary candidate for home users), Professional (for most common business uses) and Ultimate (all the features). There is also Enterprise edition which is the same as Ultimate, but with a different licensing mechanism.

Like Windows Vista, Microsoft use a common install media (DVD) which has all the bits required for any of the installation versions on the same disc.  Which bits to install is determined by the edition selection/configuration.

With the Windows Vista downloads from MSDN / TechNet, you had a single disc and when you started the install process, you picked which edition you wanted/had the key for.  You then entered the key.  This was easy, except when you didn’t know what edition the key you had was designed for.

Windows 7 downloads are different this time round, because Microsoft have created a DVD for each edition, not giving you the choice of which edition to install at run-time.

That means if you want to test different configurations using Home Basic, Home Premium and say Ultimate, you need to download 3 different DVD images (at 2.4 or 3GB each)

BUT.  There is a was to bring back the selector.  HOWEVER, it requires a bit of time and a few tools.  The tools I use in this description are ones I used, but there are alternatives available.

1. Download an ISO for the desired platform (x86 or x64).  I recommend the Ultimate but it makes no difference (except possibly the enterprise edition, due to it’s different licensing system)
2. If you want, burn the ISO to disc.  Remember that this disc will only be for that particular edition.
   • If you didn’t burn a DVD, then you can use a virtual drive software (Daemon Tools, Virtual Drive, etc..) to mount the ISO as a drive.
   • Otherwise, use a archive extraction tool like 7Zip or WinRAR to open the ISO like an archive file
3. Copy the contents of the ISO/disc to a temp folder on your hard-drive.  Be sure to copy all subfolders.
4. Now navigate to <temp>\sources and delete ei.cfg.  This config file tells the installer what edition the disc has been classified as.  Removing it enables the edition picker.

Right.  That’s it.  Now you just need to make a bootable media so you can do some installs.  I prefer to use a USB drive.  There are a number of good tutorials on how to do this, such as http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-install-windows-7vista-from-usb-drive-detailed-100-working-guide/

Otherwise, if you want to make a DVD, you will need to create a bootable ISO image. Again, there are a number of packages out there.  I use a Microsoft (internal) tool called CDImage

cdimage –lGRMCULFRER_EN_DVD –m –u2 -b<temp>\boot\etfsboot.com <temp> <dest>\Windows7.ISO

Give it a while and you’ll have a ISO file that can be burnt with any standard burning software (or even Windows itself if you’re using the RC)

Let me know if you have any problems and I’ll try and help where I can…

IE8 on Windows7 has a few annoying quirks.   Many of these quirks are resolved with the latest build if IE8, but you can’t install that on Win7, so I’m out of luck (until such time I decide to download/install a later build).

So I’m giving Firefox a whirl on my laptop at home.

I played with Opera 9 for a while at work, and while it was fine for simple browsing, there were way too many annoying things that IE just dealt with (like NTLM authentication, keyboard shortcut completion, filtering of content. Oh and the random lockups) to make me lose interest.

Anyway, I’ve downloaded Firefox 3.0.5 (GB) and set it as the default browser. It’ll be interesting to see if:

- I can adapt to the way it handles tabs and windows]
- any shortcuts inside applications (such as Live Mail) correctly launch FF instead of IE
- I find any sites that worked fine in IE6/IE8/IE8 that either works better or don’t work with FF.

I still haven’t found a single tool I can use to maintain my blog, Facebook and Twitter.  Hell, even a single tool which let me update Twitter and Facebook (optionally) at the same time would be cool.

Marcus started school today.  I’m pretty sure we were more wigged out about it than he was.  He had a few confusing moments because he didn’t fully understand a few things, but it’ll get better.

I have a cunning plan.  My last cunning plan required rebuilding a PC. This one could very well require building a PC.  We’ll see how the planning goes.

Gardening is a lot of hard work.  But satisfying.

I’m sad, but not surprised, that my 5 year old MP3 player can’t cope with an MP3 that is 700MB (9 hours) long.

I’m on day 2 of my holiday.  I’ve already been bugged by work 5 times.  2 phone calls, 1 TXT and 2 “incredibly urgent” emails.  And that doesn’t even include the emails that need my attention and if do ignore them until next week, will probably cause me more headaches that it’s worth. 
Doesn’t help that the only other guy on my team that could possibly do some of what I do is currently skiing in Canada. 

I’m a little miffed that Windows 7 can’t access my MP3 player the same way previous versions did.  Sure, it shows up as a removable drive, and I can view the files, delete files and create new folders.  But if I try to copy new music onto it, I get a “Permission denied” error.
I can sync it just fine using Media Player though, so it’s not a real biggie.

Auckland SQL – February meeting.  Need to plan it.  Tomorrow; Thursday at the latest. (PS:  If you want to come talk, please let me know)

Using Windows 7 with a widescreen laptop?  My tip for the day.  Put the “start/task bar” on the side.  You get 40 pixels of vertical real estate back, and the new style bar makes it totally usable.

Need to spend some quality time with the aquarium.  It’s been neglected the past couple of months.  Will get some new plants and try and find new stock to replenish those who have passed on.

IE8 in Win7 beta has a serious problem with remembering cookies.  Serious problem...

My only regret about having my home computer running Windows7 is that I can’t play with the IE8-RC that was released today.

With Vista you can type in a command into the Start search bar (such as “cmd.exe”) and then hit CTRL-SHIFT-ENTER to have it launch with Administrative privileges.

You then have to acknowledge the launch via UAC (you do have UAC turned on right).  You can short-cut this with ALT-C for “Confirm”

Nice easy way to get Admin DOS shell.

Windows 7 changed the keyboard accelerator from ALT-C to ALT-Y (Yes)

I know it’s little, but it’s something my finger memory will need to deal with on a regular basis, swapping between the two environments

You wanna know what I think the best thing about Windows 7 is (so far).

Actually, there are a LOT of really cool things about this version of the Windows platform but thing that is really cool right now is the Desktop slideshow.

When picking your backdrop, you if you multi-select images (or pick a folder), it puts the backdrop into slideshow mode, meaning it cycles through the images you picked every x seconds/minutes/hours.

Simple, but very nice.  Once less 3rd party package I need to install…

I did a nice clean install of Windows 7 yesterday.  It lasted until around lunchtime today.

Oh, don’t get me wrong.  I love 7 over Vista, and wouldn’t go back.

I finished installing all my applications I needed so I created a standard user account, added a password to the default administrator account and deleted the “admin” account I had created during installation.

WHOOPS.  It’s kind of hard to respond to a UAC prompt (yeah, like I’m going to turn that off) when you don’t have any active admin accounts left.

I tried a number of options to turn the admin account back on, but in the end, I did a reinstall.  So tonight I will be putting applications back on.

There are a few quirks I dislike about this build (7000) vs. the PDC build, but it’s a massive improvement over previous Windows OSs.