The leaked versions of Windows 7 have now evolved well past the official releases of the next iteration of the Windows client from Microsoft. While the Redmond company managed to serve only Windows 7 Beta Build 7000 to end users, the actual bits for Windows 7 Build 7022 from the Release Candidate branch are already available for download in the wild from various third-party sources, including top torrent websites, after the development milestone was leaked by testers. At the same time, information on Windows 7 Build 7032, a version superseding 7022, but also from the RC-branch, was also leaked, although this time around, the Enterprise SKU bits have not left the select pool of testers Microsoft released the edition to.

With pre-Beta variants of Windows 7, the largest impediment in deploying the operating system was the fact that Microsoft had offered activation keys only to participants to its official events, including the Professional Developers Conference 2009 and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference 2009, along with a limited number of close partners also test-driving early milestones of the platform. There was no legitimate way to activate Windows 7 pre-Beta, until a simple workaround emerged. Users reported at that time that product keys designed to activate pre-release versions of Windows Vista also worked on the pre-Beta builds of Windows 7. The activation workaround did not survive for long, as Microsoft blacklisted the keys.

Users of pre-Beta releases of Windows 7 were left with the option to prolong the trial period of the operating system via the slmgr command, but un-activated Win 7 copies have the disadvantage of not allowing users to send feedback to Microsoft in the same manner as activated copies. The same is not valid for Windows 7 Build 70XX releases from the RC-branch.

As you will be able to see from the screenshots included at the bottom of this article, Windows 7 Build 7022 can be activated with the same product keys available for Windows 7 Beta Build 7000. Although, at this point in time, Microsoft discontinued completely all downloads of Windows 7 client Beta, the company continues to offer product keys, and to keep the activation process live for both Build 7000 Beta and later, including Build 7022 from the RC-branch. This scenario points to the possibility that Microsoft will continue to use the Windows 7 beta product keys going forward even for the Release Candidate build of the operating system.

Users can activate the 32-bit flavor of Windows 7 Build 7022, the only one that was leaked, with the following product keys: 6JKV2-QPB8H-RQ893-FW7TM-PBJ73; TQ32R-WFBDM-GFHD2-QGVMH-3P9GC; GG4MQ-MGK72-HVXFW-KHCRF-KW6KY; 4HJRK-X6Q28-HWRFY-WDYHJ-K8HDH; and QXV7B-K78W2-QGPR6-9FWH9-KGMM7. Keys to activate the 64-bit versions of Windows 7 Beta are here.