My World, My thoughts

Hi everyone,

I have recently started MSDN Academic Alliance in my college. MSDN Academic Alliance is a Microsoft Program for college and universities where the students and faculty can download Microsoft Products for free. MSDN Academic Alliance is similar to various other MSDN and TechNet subscriptions. The only difference is that its meant for colleges. There are lot of useful products available on MSDN AA. One that catches everyone`s attention is Windows 7 Professional Version that is now available for download (much earlier than its scheduled release date October 22nd).

Recently I came to know that people are facing lot of problems in the third step of Win 7 (and few other software) downloads. This step is CRC Checking. Basically, the copy we download from MSDN AA is not an EXE file. Its wrapped in another format which is called SDC or Secure Digital Content. So what happens in that first you download the SDC file and then EXE file is extracted from it. This happens during CRC Check stage. At the same time, it checks for the consistency of the file downloaded.

If this step takes a lot of time, then you need not worry about it. Simply follow the following procedure:

1. Download a small utility called UNPACK SDC. Its a command line utility. To download it, please click here.
2. Once the file is downloaded, extract the zip file. You will get an exe file. Copy it to the folder where you have downloaded the SDC file from MSDN AA.



3. Then Click on Start Button --> Run. Then write "cmd" on Run window and press enter or click on OK.



4. A command line prompt should come up. On this go to the folder where you have saved SDC file.



5. Then type the following command.

unpacksdc "name of sdc file" "output folder location" skipcrc



6. And now your ISO file is ready. Go ahead and burn in it DVD to install Windows 7. Alternatively you can also install win 7 from USB. The procedure is in my next blog post.