Free download of Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate – with Service Pack 1 (SP1) integrated. Welcome news from Microsoft – You can now download a legal copy of the English 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional or Ultimate – and they have Service Pack 1 (SP1) integrated into them.
Updated February 2015 – Microsoft appear to have taken down all the official downloads of Windows 7 so the links below are no longer functional – we’ll update if they show up again. However, if you originally bought a retail copy of Windows 7 (i.e. it was not preinstalled on a computer by the manufacturer) you can still visit Microsoft’s Software Recovery website and download a backup Windows 7 DVD – you’ll need your 25 character license key to get it.
Why Is That So Useful? Usually, after you install/reinstall Windows 7 you then have to spend a long time installing SP1 and a year’s worth of updates immediately afterwards – a royal pain. However, these downloads already include SP1 (integrated into W7) and most subsequent updates so if you install/reinstall from them you will save all that updating time.
Also, if your computer did not come with a proper W7 disk (perhaps you only got a manufacturer’s recovery disk or none at all) this is a chance to grab a full copy of W7 which would allow you to (re)install W7 from scratch (or repair it) if you ever need to.
Finally, you could even use this to just install W7 as a trial for 30 days e.g. if you are unsure you will like it or whether W7 will work well on your computer.
The download files are very large – 2.5 to 4GB – so you will need a decent broadband connection. The downloaded file is an ISO image file which you will then need to burn to DVD (which you can boot from) – see my article on how to burn an ISO image file to a blank DVD if you need help on how to do with it.
The English download links are below – they are all from Digital River, Microsoft’s official online distributor partner:
[February 2015 – links removed]
Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit SP1
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
Windows 7 Professional 32-bit SP1
Windows 7 Professional 32-bit SP1
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
Note: As with all legal copies of Windows 7, once you install it you must either purchase a license key or use your own legal Windows 7 license key to activate it (to continue to use it after 30 days).
@john – no need to download, System File Checker (SFC) is already included within every version of XP – see our guide for how to use it https://techlogon.com/repair-windows-with-system-file-checker/
how to download system file cheaker for xp
Is there a similar download available for Vista?
There’s no official source download for Vista (or XP) that I know of, presumably as it’s too old now.
There may be ‘dodgy’ downloads around but they’re not recommended, or legal. Best bet is probably to try to borrow a genuine install DVD from a friend etc if possible