How To Upgrade Windows 8 RP to RTM Without Formatting or Losing Data
Microsoft never allowed to upgrade their Beta or Release previews to RTM Final Builds. I am using Windows 8 RP for few months now and didn’t upgrade because of fear of formatting data. But trick to upgrade Windows 8 RP to RTM directly is now here.
- Open the ‘ISO image of Windows 8 RTM and extract all the files that are inside a folder on your PC. To do this, you can use any suitable order: WinRAR, 7-Zip, UltraISO, etc.
- Open the file with Notepad cversion.ini which is located in the sources extracted from the ISO of Windows 8 RTM;
- Replace the two numeric strings in the file (should be 8508 and 8508) with 7100 (in order to obtain 7100 and 7100) and save the changes;
- Start the installation of Windows 8 RTM launching the setup.exe file in the folder sources.
Note: I tried many ISO image viewers but couldn’t edit the file within ISO so, you will have to extract and edit.
If everything went the right way, you should be able to install the final version of Windows 8 running the upgrade from RP to RTM. In any case, it is an unofficial technique (and generally recommended). Do not expect that Microsoft will provide assistance in case of problems or errors generated from this type of upgrade.
What is Retained?
- User data including My Documents, Desktop Settings, Recycle Bin.
- Same User Account can be used to login.
What is Lost?
- Installed Applications and Programs.
New Windows directory is created in C:\ and older installation directory is renamed to Windows.old. You can delete this after upgrading is successful and claim up to 20GB of space.
Note: Upgrade takes too much time compared to Clean Install. I upgraded from Release Preview to Windows 8 RTM Professional 64 Bit and it took more than 5 hours to complete installation.
After installation, you may remove the Windows 8 Build 9200 Watermark from Right bottom of desktop.
via Neowin
