1. post-purchase you will receive email with a link to download “DLMWin7HP32US.exe”, save it to C:\
2. execute “C:\DLMWin7HP32US.exe” which will extract:
   1. C:\setup1.box
   2. C:\setup2.box
   3. C:\Win7-HP-Retail-en-us-x86.exe
3. execute: C:\Win7-HP-Retail-en-us-x86.exe which will create a folder in pwd called “C:\expandedSetup”
4. download and extract: oscdimg to C:\oscdimg.exe”
5. execute: C:\>oscdimg.exe -u2 -bC:\expandedSetup\boot\etfsboot.com -h C:\expandedSetup C:\Win7.ISO

* The above steps assume C:\ for simplicity sake.

Update: Perform a Clean installation of Windows 7 on a clean system using Upgrade Media / License:

1. First, perform a normal clean install of the OS by booting the PC with the Upgrade Setup disc and stepping through Setup. You will need to skip past the screen when prompted to enter your product key during installation.
2. After performing the clean install, ensure that there are no Windows Updates pending that would require a system reboot. (You’ll see an orange shield icon next to Shutdown in the Start Menu if this is the case).
3. Then, open regedit.exe with Start Menu Search and navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/Change MediaBootInstall from “1″ to “0″.
4. Open the Start Menu again and type cmd to display a shortcut to the Command Line utility. Right-click this shortcut and choose “Run as administrator.”
5. In the command line window, type: slmgr /rearm
6. Reboot. When Windows 7 reboots, run the Activate Windows utility, type in your product key and activate windows.

Update #2:
I can now confirm that the above steps worked perfectly without a single hitch. I created  the ISO and installed on a totally clean system and successfully activated the “upgrade” license I purchased. I really have to wonder why can’t Microsoft (and other companies) refuse to make things painless out of the box? I really wouldn’t mind paying full price for quality products if they aren’t wrapped up so tightly in suck.

Related posts:

Hard Drive Standby / Spin-down / Sleep Script for a Linux Media Server

To work-around the frustration with the apparently broken firmware in the Samsung SpinPoint 1GB models I wrote a script which runs runs from the root crontab every 15 minutes to intelligently spin-down drives on my Linux media server. The script monitors for the presence of media clients on the network, checks for Samba file locks and disk activity to make decisions on when to sleep the array. I generally want to keep the entire array spun up while a client is active to avoid any delay when navigating the media and to power down the drives shortly after there is no activity.

The script as-is is probably pretty specific for my media server but should be helpful as a starting point if you’re also struggling with getting spin-down working using hdparm. The script so far has been a better overall solution compared to hdparm as it allows much more flexibility than simply monitoring for disk activity. Let me know if you have any suggestions or questions.

Related posts:

Bootable Install Media from Windows 7 Upgrade

Mediaportal HTPC Front-end: “My Videos” View of downloaded Apple Trailers.

Generic setup overview for a Debian based Linux system:

1. Run “sudo apt-get install xmlstarlet wget” to install xmlstarlet and wget if not already installed on your system.
2. Modify the script and configure “GET1080p=”, “GETPOSTER=”, “SAVEPATH=”, “DLDBPATH=” and the “EUID” number of the user running the script.
3. Create an empty “.appletrailers.db” plain text file in the defined “DLDBPATH” with the appropriate permissions.
4. Create the “SAVEPATH=” path with appropriate permissions for the script to save the trailers and posters.
5. Execute the script manually and make sure everything is working as expected.
6. Create an appropriate weekly crontab entry for the script.

Changelog:

v0.5 090825 – fix for Apple changes requiring Quicktime user-agent. download: appletrailers.0.5

• Quick wget fix for user-agent spoofing to deal with recent changes by Apple. http://twitter.com/iTunesTrailers/status/3429452495
  

v0.4 090225 – fix for stale 720p XML feed

• I recently noticed that the the 720p XML feed from Apple is not being updated. This updated version will utilize the SD XML feed from Apple to make an educated guess for the the HD trailer URL. This work-around with some quick testing shows it’s working 100% for everything recently posted in the feed.
• The current work-around for the stale 720p feed will only work if you have “GET1080=1″ set. I’m not downloading the 720p trailers and the work-around for 720p trailers and I simply wasn’t motivated to fix something I wasn’t using. If anyone using this script is downloading the 720p versions of the trailers please post feedback and might be motivated to post another update for this. It’s also very possible that the stale 720p feed from Apple is a temporary situation.

v0.3 090123 – fix for h720 a720 filenames encountered recently in the feeds and minor regex fixes.

• regex updated to correctly handle trailer filenames with h720 or a720.
• regex fixes to escape periods correctly.

v0.2 081222 – fix for .m4v extension in XML feeds and other minor improvements.

• removed the logic responsible for renaming .mov file extension to .hdmov: This rename does not seems to be necessary for most media players I have tested against. The rename would cause problems with hardware devices such as the NMT PCH do not support the .hdmov extension and have no user-end method to add supported extensions.
  
• added handing for .m4v trailers: This was something that recently started showing up in the XML feeds. The work-around to handle this replaces the .m4v file extension in the feed with a .mov extension which Apple is still publishing on the servers.
  
• updated logic for tracking completed downloads: The logic was changed to accommodate the new .m4v extension that started showing up in the XML feeds. The logic is also slightly improved to avoid false positives against the already downloaded database. The script now checks for the ID and filename excluding resolution and extensions portions.

v0.1 081013 – initial release

Related posts:

Hard Drive Standby / Spin-down / Sleep Script for a Linux Media Server