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From my university, I can obtain Windows licenses. The only chicken-egg problem is that the official downloader only runs on Windows. Is there any way to get the Windows 7 ISOs via a regular download on Ubuntu, without using their official tool?

Frank
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Martin Ueding
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  • Do they not have a http download link? – TheXed Dec 05 '11 at 16:30
  • @TheX they don't, as far as I know...? – jrg Dec 05 '11 at 16:31
  • And this is Ubuntu related why? – Uri Herrera Dec 05 '11 at 16:32
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    Maybe you could go to your Uni tech department maybe they could help you get it? – TheXed Dec 05 '11 at 16:33
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    Because he is asking how to download the ISO on Ubuntu? – TheXed Dec 05 '11 at 16:34
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    @UriHerrera "@thex This is perfectly on topic - the question is "How can I download a MSDnAA Windows ISO on Ubuntu, without using their official tool (which is windows only)?" – jrg Dec 05 '11 at 16:34
  • I see how this is not related to Ubuntu only. But I hope that people here know to do this, since in a Windows QA site people would not have this problem. – Martin Ueding Dec 05 '11 at 16:36
  • @Lekensteyn so true. –  Dec 05 '11 at 16:40
  • Try wine @queueoverflow – Amith KK Dec 05 '11 at 16:41
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    Another call for Wine. Try it. I also don't see why this has to be off-topic. "How do you download the MSDNAA ISOs under Ubuntu?". The last part is implicit because we're on Ask Ubuntu. – Oli Dec 05 '11 at 16:44
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    @queueoverflow I work for my university's IT department. We allow students to borrow an installation DVD if they cannot download it on their own PC. With Windows, you can use any installation media as long as the edition of Windows is the same. You just need to provide your own product key. I would ask your IT dept. about it. – iglvzx Dec 05 '11 at 16:54
  • Whatever you do, don't forget to complain about this stupidity. This is even the first time I heard of an official download manager - at our university we could just download it from a private FTP-like server. – htorque Dec 05 '11 at 16:56
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    The simple solution would be to download the software on a lab computer and transfer the file to your computer. – Ramhound Dec 05 '11 at 16:56
  • Related: [How can one buy/obtain Microsoft DVD/CD media when you have download only version MSDNAA](http://superuser.com/questions/84973/how-can-one-buy-obtain-microsoft-dvd-cd-media-when-you-have-download-only-versio) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Dec 05 '11 at 16:58
  • I had this problem once. I ended up borrowing the DVD from a friend... – billc.cn Dec 05 '11 at 17:01
  • For what it's worth, I don't think there are any legal problems if you have a legit serial number and obtain the MSDN .ISO file from "the usual places". You're just obtaining installation media, what you actually pay for is the serial number/product key. – Breakthrough Dec 05 '11 at 19:09
  • @htorque: MSDNAA members can provide installation media via FTP, or by loaning out physical disks, but the access control and record-keeping requirements may be prohibitive for many smaller or less well-resourced departments. So I wouldn't be surprised if many institutions (like my own) just rely on the ELMS hosted downloads. – Harry Johnston Dec 05 '11 at 22:28
  • @HarryJohnston Good point, didn't know about ELMS. – htorque Jan 19 '12 at 11:10

3 Answers3

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See the following Super User questions:

  • [How can I reinstall Windows 7 if I lost my installation DVD?][1]

  • [Windows 7 Activation FAQ][2]

The first has links to where you can download ISOs of Windows 7 directly from Microsoft's online disk image distributor. The second has information about how activation works - to summarize the relevant part, for MSDNAA licenses (I'm a student and my school has MSDNAA, so I've verified this is true) you can use the license key you get from the MSDNAA website with any installation DVD, although in some cases you may be required to call Microsoft's activation hotline to complete the activation.

nhinkle
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Wine would be a good choice in this case, however I find that it can clog up your system sometimes (and it isn't stable at all in my eyes).
As such, can't you just use the good old way of asking a classmate to FTP it over to you? (an alternative is Crossover, which is basically an improved version of Wine, and in my eyes really stable)

Nate Koppenhaver
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Peter Vermeulen
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0

If the MSDNAA Software Center doesn't offer you "custom delivery method" as an alternative to the standard download, then it is likely that your institution doesn't provide any alternative to the Windows-only download tool. You should contact your usual IT support folk (probably the departmental IT group if there is one) if you want to confirm this.

Presumably, you have access to Windows computing facilities of some sort. This is probably your best bet. Once you've downloaded the ISO you can burn it to a DVD for installation.

Wine might work, as already suggested, or you could do the download from a friend's PC.

For the benefit of other readers who may be puzzled, the standard method for downloads from the MSDNAA Software Center involves a special tool that downloads an encrypted file (either direct from the software center or from a local campus web server) and decrypts it. Institutions can provide students with other means of obtaining media, but then access needs to be authenticated and recorded, so I suspect most places just depend on the standard process, ugly as it is.

Harry Johnston
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