Windows 7 beta automatic reboot begins today

Starting today and ending August 1^st, Windows 7 beta will reboot every two hours.  This way Microsoft wants to draw attention to users that their version of Windows 7 will soon expire.  If you don’t want to be bothered by the restarts, you can download and install Windows 7 RC, which will be available for download until August 15.

If you want to switch to Windows 7 RC, you should know that you have to do a “clean install”. Windows 7 RC will detect that you have a beta version of Windows 7 installed and will block the installation of the RC version.  Microsoft is offering a way to update your beta version to RC version. This is the solution:

1. Download the ISO as you did previously and burn the ISO to a DVD.
2. Copy the whole image to a storage location you wish to run the upgrade from (a bootable flash drive or a directory on any partition on the machine running the pre-release build).
3. Browse to the sources directory.
4. Open the file cversion.ini in a text editor like Notepad.
5. Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. For example, change 7100 to 7000 (pictured below).
6. Save the file in place with the same name.
7. Run setup like you would normally from this modified copy of the image and the version check will be bypassed.

Windows 7 RC will expire on June 1, 2010 and the reboot session will begin on March 1, 2010.

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2. Microsoft Announces the Beta Release of Microsoft Office 2010
3. Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 Beta for Windows 7
4. Windows 7 will RTM on 6th of August
5. Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack?