I laughed when I saw this:

Windows 7 activation error: 0xC004F061

If you receive error “0xC004F061″ when trying to activate Windows 7, it means you’re using a product key for an upgrade version of Windows 7 and a previous version of Windows wasn’t on your computer when Windows 7 was installed. To install an upgrade version of Windows 7, Windows Vista or Windows XP must be installed on your computer. If you formatted the drive before starting the installation process, you won’t be able to use the upgrade product key to activate Windows 7. To activate Windows 7, you’ll need to install your previous version of Windows, and then reinstall Windows 7. For help with the activation process, go to the Microsoft Support website.

Seriously?  Is that what you call customer service?  Rather than giving your customers an option to enter their XP/Vista product key you want them to reinstall the old operating system only to reinstall Windows 7….  Does anyone else see something wrong with this?  So if you don’t want to reinstall two operating systems there is a registry fix to get around this.

1. Open up regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE
2. Backup (Export) the folder just in case
3. Change MediaBootInstall from 1 to 0
4. Open up a command prompt running it as Administrator
5. go to C:\Windows\system32
6. > cscript.exe slmgr.vbs -rearm
7. Reboot your computer
8. Enter your product key

Hope this helps

I spent some time playing around with Windows 7 RC a few weeks ago and I have to say it was actually kind of nice.  I don’t know if I would be saying the same thing if I ran it on my older hardware.  Lets just say anything better be running fast on an Intel Core i7 920, x58 mobo, 150GB raptor, and 6Gigs of triple channel memory.  To this day I have never run Vista so it took sometime to get used to the new Areo interface and the Vista-ish start menu.  The UAC really does remind me of the Get a Mac commerical but thankfully it was easy enough to turn off (Obligitory plug for just disabling it by default).

Currently I’m toying around with the idea of running it again for a while.  I was able to run all my usually applications and get my development environment up and running after learning how to navigate the new file structure.  I just hate the idea of having to reload everything again….  CNET has a good review for those of you thinking/wondering about Windows 7.