cannot upgrade from vista to windows 7 ...help please

The unattend answer file contains an invalid product key. Either remove the invalid key or provide a valid product key in the unattend answer file to proceed with Windows installation

I am running vista in the VM of my parallels 5.0 and when I try to upgrade vista to windows 7 the installation begins and then i receive the above message...no matter what i do i cannot get past this point...all i am able to do is press OK on the box displaying the message which removes the box and allows me to remove the disc.....any help would be greatly appreciated....

 

i think it's better to contact with Microsoft on this problem

 

i did and they told me to contact parallels.....oh well

 

hmm, and how they argumented this?

 

Why it's necessary to use unattended installation? Did you try to install in manual mode?

 

i simply ran vista ...put the disc in and let it autorun....

 

I too have this problem, the only installation of windows instalale on this machine is the windows beta - now i wish to replace this with windoes 7 full but have the same "unattended answer file" problem.

any clues on killing my exisintg widows entirly and if it would help in solving this - i.e would remove the unattendedd answer file too.

 

i do not even know what unattend installation means and apparently neither did the microsoft people!

 

unattended issue

I had this also, turns out my license is for an upgrade W7, not a new install. The unattended is because I filled in the code into parallels at the beginning, so it would load "unattended". I tried manual, that's when windows told me that I had an upgrade version. So I had to burn the upgrade iso image to a dvd, start & run my existing XP VM, then pop DVD into drive. It came right up then.

hope this helps

 

This sounds positive

I too am loading an upgrade version - obviously I have the full version of xp but didn't see the point until now to install it first as the xp > win7 upgrade tells you that you need to format your hdd first ('true' upgrades are only possible from vista)

I will report back on how is goes.

 

[solved]

Hi all, I am now reporting back with a few findings and my solutions to the problem of not being able to install because of a 'unattended answers file'..

I think (although may be wrong) that this error message will be shown not only if the product key is mismatched but also if it doesn't currently exist. my reasons for this are that I had remove all instanced of windows and even parallels from my iMac, re-installed then ran the widows 7 family upgrade disk. getting the same error.

the important art of my solution is that i am upgrading from windows xp to windows 7 family pack upgrade. windows 7 can't do this without a service pack 3 installed on the xp machine and even then it still needs to do a 'clean install'.

once reinstalled I have to reinstall the parallels tools to get the networking, sound and pci drivers working but all is perfect now.

 

ok, guys.

Please do somebody follow: when yuor problem VM is active go Help->Report a Problem, create and send us problem report and post here it id. I need information about VM configuration in order to try to understand problem.

 

problem report 1083472 generated on this subject!

 

Here ya go

I had this same issue, my first time using Parallels. I have 5 and trying to do a new install of Windows 7. Anyway, the issue is when you are trying to install a new windows OS for the first time, in the Parallels window choose "Skip Detection" instead of doing the regular install where you have to enter the windows key within parallels. For some reason windows doesn't detect it then. It just finished installing on mine right now... so works great.

 

The reason it is doing this is because when you are adding a new windows system and you go through the "detect settings" install and enter the windows key through parallels, windows will not recognize it for some reason. Do it over and click the do not detect settings button on the left. This solved my problem.

 

Thank you very much for report. I took a look on VM configuration and found that floppy device points on unattended image:

<Fdd>
<Index>0</Index>
<Enabled>1</Enabled>
<Connected>1</Connected>
<EmulatedType>1</EmulatedType>
<SystemName>unattended.fdd</SystemName>
<UserFriendlyName>unattended.fdd</UserFriendlyName>
<Remote>0</Remote>
<DeviceDescription></DeviceDescription>
</Fdd>

Seems it was created at a time when Windows Vista installing at this VM and stayed till this time when you decided to upgrade your Windows installation. So in order to workaround problem just go to VM configuration editor, select Floppy disk at Hardware list and uncheck Connected checkbox. Then try to perform Windows upgrade procedure again

 

Guys,

please confirm whether this solution helped. You can also use official KB article:

http://kb.parallels.com/en/6955

 

The following issues are preventing Windows from upgrading. Cancel the upgrade, complete each task, and then restart the upgrade to continue.


There is not enough free space on partition (C. A total of 12853 megabytes (MB) of free disk space is required. Try Disk Cleanup, or moving files to an external location such as a CD, DVD, or external hard drive, and then restart the installation.


Upgrading Windows will affect the following devices and/or programs:


These devices might not work properly after the upgrade. Before upgrading, we recommend updating the drivers for these devices. Cancel the upgrade, open Control Panel and search for "update device drivers", or go to the device manufacturer's website to search for updated drivers.
Sound, video and game controllers: Intel(r) 82801BA/BAM AC'97 Audio Controller


this is what came up after it allowed me to start the install....seems we fixed the uninstall problem but unfortunately these problems kept me from continuing the upgrade so i was forced to stop it...any suggestions?

 

i do appreciate the help dealing with the unattend problem but the problems encountered and mentioned above keep me from performing the upgrade...please help me to make whatever other changes are necessary in order to allow the upgrade to proceed successfully...thank you

 

to update...i was finally able to get the upgrade to work...i figured out how to allocate more hard drive space to the virtual machine and then uninstalled the sound device that was causing installation problems...the windows 7 is now running and i am crossing my fingers that it is going to continue to function properly going forward!