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[Broni]

http://www.mydigital...c-media-or-iso/

It's possible the Windows 7 ISO or DVD disc media that end-user possessed may be restricted to install a single edition or version of Windows 7 only. For example, a Windows 7 Professional media may not prompt option to select which edition of Windows 7 to install, and instead will install Windows 7 Professional edition. Likewise for Windows 7 Ultimate DVD ISO image or disc which may not have edition selection screen.

However, all DVD of Windows 7 does contains and able to install all and any version of Windows 7, from Windows 7 Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional to Ultimate edition. Actually, the ability to select the version or edition of Windows 7 during setup installation, or which edition that the setup will automatically install, lies with a small configuration file named ei.cfg on the Windows 7 DVD, disc media or ISO image.



The content of the ei.cfg file, inside the "sources" folder of the DVD looks like below:

[EditionID]
Ultimate
[Channel]
Retail
[VL]
0

When ei.cfg does not exist, Windows 7 setup process will display a screen during Install Windows wizard to ask user to select the operating system (edition) to install. The selection of OS includes Windows 7 Starter, Windows 7 Home Basic, Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate. Thus, in order to be able to install any editions or install another different edition of Windows 7 without having to download ISO image or order a new DVD of Windows 7 with all SKUs enabled (allSKU version), use the following hack to delete or modify ei.cfg file.

• Download and install an disc image utility such as PowerISO or UltraISO to open the ISO image of Windows 7 DVD. If you own a physical DVD disc media, the similar tool allows you to rip the DVD to ISO or other image format too. Another alternative for user with Windows 7 DVD ISO image downloaded via torrent or from Internet is to extract all contents of the ISO image by using extraction tool such as WinRAR or 7-zip, or mount the ISO and copy contents to a folder.
• Browse to /sources/ folder.
• Locate ei.cfg file.
• Depending on preference, it's possible to modify/edit or simply delete ei.cfg file, as explained below. Choice 1: Delete ei.cfg
  
  Note: This method may not be supported anymore on Windows 7 RTM, as Microsoft decides to confine each Windows 7 disc image or media to one edition of Windows 7 only. If you encounter error after deleting ei.cfg, use the next method to choose your desired edition of Windows 7 to install instead.
  
  When ei.cfg is deleted, Windows 7 setup wizard will give user an option to select and choose which version (SKU) of operating system user wants to install during installation.
  
  Choice 2: Edit and Modify ei.cfg
  
  By modifying the EditionID section of ei.cfg by replacing Ultimate (or other edition specified there) with another edition, user can preset another edition SKU of Windows 7 that user want setup to install automatically. The Edition ID available for installation are as follow:
  • Ultimate
  • Professional
  • HomePremium
  • HomeBasic
  • Starter

Save the ei.cfg after editing.

<li>For user who wants to in-place upgrade to Windows 7, it's possible to run setup.exe from extracted DVD contents now. The modified ISO can also be burned to a DVD disc or saved to a new ISO image.

[Broni]

Windows 7 ISO Image Edition Switcher Free Download for Direct Convert


Windows 7 no longer has "One Disc to Rule Them All" universal installation DVD disc media or ISO image which allows users to select whichever editions of Windows 7 they prefer to install during setup. Instead, each Windows 7 installation ISO or media is specific for a channel and distribution and can be used to install an edition of Windows 7 only.

The one-edition only of Windows 7 ISO or DVD may bring inconvenient and challenges to some people. For example, TechNet or MSDN subscribers will have to use and waste unnecessary bandwidth to download multiple ISO images for each editions of Windows 7. And for people who wants to backup and archive Windows 7 ISOs or DVDs will now have to allocate more disk storage or cabinet space to save and store multiple ISO images or DVD discs, instead of just two – one for 32-bit Windows 7 and another for 64-bit Windows 7. Worse, if user want copies too for allegedly retail, upgrade, oem or volume license editions.

In fact, all Windows 7 image is almost similar, if not the same, regardless of license type, channel, SKU or edition (with the exception of Windows 7 Enterprise), except for probably ei.cfg file which makes Windows 7 installation ISO differs in a few bytes of data. The trick to modify ei.cfg to install any or another different edition of Windows 7 is been used to modify Windows 7 installation file so that user can install desired edition of Windows 7. One downside of the manual modification of ei.cfg file is that user will either need to copy all Windows 7 installation files from DVD, or unpack and extract all content of Windows 7 ISO image to local hard disk drive.

Users who don't want to go through the hassle to manually change the ei.cfg file can use the alternative Windows 7 ISO Image Edition Switcher free utility to do the job instead. Windows 7 ISO Image Edition Switcher is a binary patcher that converts an image of one Windows 7 edition into image of another edition automatically.

Windows 7 ISO Image Edition Switcher supports the following conversions, together with its features, limitations and restrictions:

• Support conversion between ISO images of 32-bit (x86) Windows 7 Starter, Windows 7 Home Basic, Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Professional.
• Support conversion between ISO images of 64-bit (x64) Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate.
• 32-bit image can only be converted into any 32-bit image, and 64-bit image can only be converted into another 64-bit image of any supported edition.
• Patching of or conversion to Windows 7 Enterprise is NOT supported.
• Patches to convert to the Windows 7 OEM editions ISO are NOT available because OEM editions have not been officially posted to MSDN or TechNet (except Windows 7 Starter), and thus there are no checksum hashes which can be used to verify the correctness of such a patch.
• Windows 7 ISO Image Edition Switcher does not require installation, and is portable app.
• The patcher patches the selected ISO file directly and immediately without backing up, so create a copy of ISO file before patching. It's also recommended to rename the ISO to reflect the target edition to avoid confusion right before or after patching.
• Current version of Windows 7 ISO Image Edition Switcher supports Windows 7 RTM ISO images of build version 7600.16385 only.

Using Windows 7 ISO Image Edition Switcher to create another copy of Windows 7 ISO image is extremely easy. Windows 7 ISO Image Edition Switcher already comes with various patches (contains inside of the archive) that able to modify physical bytes of ISO image accurately, depending on edition selected.

How to Use Windows 7 ISO Image Edition Switcher

• Download and extract Windows 7 ISO Image Edition Switcher zip package: 7600.16385-disc_switch_patches folder.zip
• Run binpatch.exe binary patcher.
• Select a patch (.bin-patch file) from 7600.16385-disc_switch_patches folder for the target edition of Windows 7 ISO which user want to convert to.
• Select the Windows 7 ISO disc image that user want to convert from.
• The ISO image selected will be patched into Windows 7 ISO of new selected edition.

After patching the ISO image, user should verify the SHA-1 hash of the final ISO file and compare the hash with official hash value of Windows 7 ISO posted on MSDN/TechNet by Microsoft to verify that the patch was successfully completed. The result of the Windows 7 patched ISO should be exactly identical to what user would have gotten if he or she downloads the ISO image directly from Microsoft's server.