How can I repair a Windows 7 installation that will work with the upgrade method?

Question

I got a computer here that is running Windows Home Premium 64-bit. The machine has something wrong with the networking stack and after everything I am just decided to nuke the system folder and do a repair install.

So I was looking around on google and came across this.

Windows 7 Repair Install

So I tried what it said. But I am unable to make this work. When I go through the step I get to the point when I am supposed to click upgrade and fetch the latest files from the Internet. But when I click the last option I am presented with an error that says hey you need to use Anytime Upgrade to do your upgrade. This is probably because the CD I am using is for my main machine which is running Windows 7 Ultimate. The other CD is nowhere to be found so I have to work with what I got.

So... What can I do? I need to reload the machine but because I don't have certain software installers for things installed on this machine I need to keep everything in place yet do the repair.

Can anyone tell what I can do or where I can look for an answer?

Answer 1

The Windows 7 DVDs contain all Windows 7 editions but which edition is used is controlled by a file called ei.cfg. Use the ei.cfg Removal Utility to remove this file and now the upgrade trick should work.

If it still fails, download the Windows 7 ISO from this legal link and use it.