The most annoying thing about being a "geek" is the need to be prepared for anything that can go wrong with a computer. With Windows, this becomes even more complicated, as you need to have a disc for each and every edition of the OS. With Vista, Microsoft introduced a universal disc, but for some reason, with Windows 7, Microsoft felt it better to return to their old ways and make each disc edition specific.
Technibble made a post about this very issue a few weeks ago. It's not that the Windows 7 discs don't contain all editions of the OS, but rather a small 51 byte file is present, restricting the disc to a specific one. To change this, a user would have to manually mess with the disc image. He'd have to create a new ISO from his DVD, remove the ei.cfg file, and write the new ISO back to the DVD.
To make this simpler, a coder has released a small utility that will take care of this, allowing anyone to alter the ISO without the worry of messing something up. It's called the ei.cfg Removal Utility, and will take your ISO and tell it to ignore the ei.cfg file. You can then burn the image back to a DVD, and use it with any legitimate license key for any edition of Windows 7. You will be able to select whichever edition you want when you first start the installer. The disc will also make it easier to service any edition that's already installed on a machine. Of course, you need a separate ISO for each version (both 32 and 64-bit). But still, 2 discs are better than 8 (sorry, this won't work for Enterprise). This tool will surely make techies lives easier.
Download: ei.cfg Removal Utility
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