Microsoft: Go back to Vista then install Windows 7 release candidate

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Computerworld - Microsoft Corp. today asked people running the Windows 7 beta to return their machines to Vista before upgrading again to the impending release candidate of Windows 7.

The company will, in fact, block upgrades from the beta to the release candidate, and plans to require users who balk at the request to edit an installation file to successfully update Windows 7.

In a long entry on the company's Engineering Windows 7 blog, Microsoft asked users to revert to Vista before trying the release candidate since "upgrading from one pre-release build to another is not a scenario we want to focus on because it is not something real-world customers will experience."

Instead, Microsoft urged users who have downloaded and installed the beta of Windows 7 -- the only officially issued version offered to the general public -- to restore their PCs to Vista.

"We want to encourage you to revert to a Vista image and upgrade or to do a clean install, rather than upgrade the existing beta," Microsoft said in the blog. " As an extended member of the development team and a participant in the beta program that has helped us so much, we want to ask that you experience real-world setup and provide us real-world telemetry."

The problem with upgrading from one pre-release build to another, Microsoft said, is that the bugs or other problems users report in those scenarios are essentially worthless. "We don't always track them down and fix them because they take time away from bugs that would only manifest themselves during this one-time pre-release operation," the company admitted.