So you decided to try out Windows 7’s Release Candidate and you’re already dreading the day it expires and you have to format your computer and start fresh. You were probably disappointed to hear that you couldn’t upgrade your Release Candidate to the full Windows 7 version once it came out. Thankfully, you were being lied to.

There is only one thing stopping you from upgrading to the Release to Manufacturer version of Windows 7, and it is a mere text file. That’s right, you won’t need to bust ouf the hex editor or download any cracks to get this working.

Start off by extracting your ISO to a folder. Once that is done go into the sources folder and look for a file named cversion.ini. Open up this file and you should see the following:

[HostBuild] MinClient=7233.0 MinServer=7100.0

Now edit the value for MinClient so that it is slightly less than what build you are currently running. You can determine your build number by looking at the bottom right corner of your desktop. So for example if you are running build 7100 you could set this to 7000.0 or lower. I have not tried this upgrade procedure with the earier Beta builds but as far as I am aware it will work as well. Unfortunately I was not aware of this method several weeks ago when I moved from Beta 2 to the Release Candidate.

After editing the file, simply save it then either burn it to a DVD, or run setup.exe right from the folder to begin your upgrade process. If all goes well, you should be greeted with the following screen: