[pchelpers] Upgrading Vista

Hi, folks!

On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I installed Vista something like 18
or so times.

Back in February, Microsoft had sent me a Vista 32-bit Business
Upgrade DVD, a companion to the XP CD that they'd already sent me.

There was a limited-time special price for upgrading from Business to
Ultimate, so I went ahead and bought that, which turned out to be an
82K .slupkg-ms file. I looked in it with Notepad and pulled the new
product key out of it, but was not able to make it work. I got the
Anytime Upgrade 32-bit DVD in the mail a few days later.  As far as I
can tell, it's basically a standard Windows disc.

Some time later, I attempted to order the 64-bit DVD online, but was
unsuccessful at that also.

Last month, Microsoft shipped Vista 64-bit Business to me as part of
the quarterly update.  This turns out to be an update also, even
though it doesn't explicitly say so.

I spent three days trying to do a "fresh" install of Vista Ultimate
64-bit.  Here's how to do it:

1. Boot from the Window Vista DVD and fresh-install Windows Vista.
Note that this is fully legal if you own a full or corporate (retail,
not upgrade or OEM) version of Windows XP or older. If you want
64-bit, you need a 64-bit DVD. DO NOT enter a key at this point (it
won't work anyway); instead, select the version that your original key
is for; Business, in my case.

2. From within Windows, install Windows again, as an upgrade. This
time, enter the original key. It should automatically select the
version, Business in my case. Be sure to activate it. If you don't
activate, you'll get a puzzling error in the next step which claims
that you don't have the right version of Windows installed.

3. Double-click the .slupkg-ms file that you buy from one of the
Windows Anytime Upgrade vendors, then, while still within Windows,
install Windows yet again. It should automatically select the new
version, Ultimate in my case. Attempting to do it without
double-clicking the .slupkg-ms file (such as entering the key manually
instead) did not work for me; I got a puzzling error about some device
failing to upgrade, which causes the upgrade to roll back. However,
I'd tried this without activating Windows first, so it may work with
an activated Windows.

It's too bad they couldn't have fixed all of the weird error messages
to give an explanation of the actual problem; I spent many hours
trying to figure out why I couldn't upgrade in the manner that worked
for previous Windows versions.  Instead of saying "Your Windows needs
to be activated first" or "You can only use this key to upgrade from a
lesser version of Windows", it gives messages which seem to be
unrelated.

I had one more problem; I needed to leave the DVD in the drive in
order to boot into Windows.  I had to get and use EasyBCD 1.6 to set
up the boot files correctly in order to start Windows without the disc
in the drive.  This may have been a consequence of doing a full
install using an upgrade version.

-- 
Scott.




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