Are you one of those early birds who installed the then free available Windows 7 Release Candidate? Fun is over. Beginning March 1, the Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) will start to shut down every two hours in preparation for its expiration on June 1, 2010. That means you will need to migrate your RC systems to an official version of Windows 7. Another option is to go back to yuor your previous operating system. But who’s willing to do that?

On February 15th you will receive an e-mail from Microsoft to perform this migration, so you can still forget about it for some days and enjoy your RC.

Microsoft will start reminding you in a friendly way that you have to switch. But on June 1st, 2010, a non-genuine experience is triggered where your wallpaper is removed and “This copy of Windows is not genuine” will be displayed in the lower right corner above the taskbar. This means your PC will no longer be able to obtain optional updates or downloads that require genuine Windows validation.

Be aware that the shut downs which will start beginning March 1 will potentially cause data loss. Work in progress won’t be saved!

Windows claims you will need a fresh install, which means some additional work in the upcoming days ….. I’m not looking forward to that. Please visit the Microsoft side to get to know everything about install, reinstall, uninstall Windows.