Windows 7 Home Premium (student edition) x64: how to do a clean install in a new VM?

[cbonsall]

Having downloaded Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit from the student offer online store, I now have three files: Win7-HP-Retail-en-us-x64.exe, Setup1.box, Setup2.box.

How do I create an install disk or ISO image from these files, so that I can do a clean install of Win7 in a new VM?

[HughBorg707 · Accepted solution]

Turns out its a known issue:

Hope this helps.

Please award points if you found it helpful!

http://www.1zero1.net

[rcardona2k]

Thanks. What a huge mess! In addition to downloading more utilities looks like you have to have another 5 GB of disk space to get both the x86 and x64 ISO versions extracted. Good luck. Digital River should have just posted ISO files to begin with and used the Akamai File Transfer manager like Microsoft does with MSDN/Technet subscribers.

[cbonsall]

Thanks for the information. Following the instructions on that website I was able to create the ISO file and an install DVD. I'm now waiting on the delivery of an extra 2GB RAM for my MacBook Pro ... then, it will be interesting to see if I can do a completely fresh install of Win7 on a new VM (no chance of upgrading my WinXP since it's 32-bit). AFAICS, I bought the Full Product Package (FPP) - wish me luck.