installing win7 to a cf-19

now i know all about the methods to do this (by reading that useful post)

i have a dodgy copy of win7 ultimate that is being replaced with win7 pro.

but i have a small issue unrelated to the actual win7 part of it.

i have an upgrade, and according to microsoft it has to be upgraded from XP or Vista. so i have XP but no disc drive. i used wintoflash to put the install onto a USB. booted from the USB. all was going well, it did a restart at some point after unpacking the files maybe? then i got a blue screen error saying something like f:/chkdsk.

i know the USB is fine. since then ive reformatted, transferred data back and forth etc

i restarted the computer and it went back to normal.

any ideas? do i need to install XP or can i install over ultimate? even though its kind of a back track, although its the same operating system right??

 

I think that you will have to have WinXP or Vista installed on your drive to do an upgrade to Win7, 32 or 64 bit, basic through ultimate. I installed Win7 ultimate on my CF19 MK IV with a freshly formatted HD and a full version of Win7 with no problems. My other HD was factory installed WinXP and it allowed the upgrade via the OEM Panasonic Win7 Pro disk. When you load Win7, it only gives 2 options so you need to read those carefully. Also, check out the Microsoft Win7 site, for more info on upgrading or fresh installs on formatted drive.

 

If it was me, I'd do a clean install of the upgrade version. Usually the system will activate with no problem. If it doesn't you can either do an upgrade on the upgrade or activate by phone. Activating by phone is tedious but, you never talk to a human.

 

I went this upgrade route with no problems - clean install of Win 7 Home Premium upgrade version (I switched from a HD to an SSD at the same time & I didn't bother to try installing XP on the SSD). It failed to activate the first time, but I reinstalled (re-upgraded?) and it activated fine the second time.