Microsoft Fail.

So I'm building a new Nikita.

She's fast, she's feature full, and right now, I have to do something rather horrific to her.

Since I was buying kickass new hardware, I wanted a kickass new Windows operating system for the (few) games that I play.

So I purchased a copy of Windows 7 Pro upgrade. I've already got an independent license for XP pro (Thanks Mercer Programming Team!), so the upgrade was the most affordable route to take.

However, this is a whole new computer.

So I found out something really sick about the Windows 7 upgrade install process.

If you have Windows already installed and launch the installer from there, the installer will detect your existing license and activate automagically. No problem.

However, in my case I'm coming from a completely scrubbed system. The previous XP install has been decommissioned and the drive formatted. I'm installing to a totally new drive (Or rather, I'm trying to).

One would think that in this (rare) case, Windows 7 upgrade media (since it allows for clean installs) would have some sort of prompt "Please enter your previous windows license here, then enter your product key for windows 7" but no.

In order to get Windows 7 installed on this machine, I'm going to be forced to do a completed Windows XP install and activation FIRST, just so that I can promptly format the drive and install Win7 in the space it occupied, just so the dumbass win7 installer activates based on the previous license.

So thanks Microsoft, for devouring an additional hour of my life that I'll never get back.

Asshats.

And people wonder why I laugh at them when they claim that Windows is easier to use than Ubuntu.