Clean Install on new hard drive

[Disturbed]

I purchased a computer about a year ago. Windows Vista was still vaporware
at the time so the manufacturer installed Windows XP on the computer with the
promise that I would be due a free "Express Ugrade" Disk to Windows Vista
Business. After About 6 months I finally received my "Express Upgrade" Disk.
I later bought the "Windows Anytime Upgrade" to Windows Vista Ultimate.

The hard drive went bad last week. I tried to reinstall Windows on a new
hard drive using my "Express Upgrade" disk to perform a clean install.
Everything looked like the installation went well. I then used my "Windows
Anytime Upgrade" to upgrade to Ultimate. Everything looked all right during
the process. I then installed all my programs over the next two days. Still
no problems arose. Last Friday I started getting message windows stating that
I needed to Activate my Windows. Since my activation key is embedded in the
Windows_Anytime_Upgrade.slupkg-ms XrML Digital License Package file, I
tried to activate by phone. The technician I talked to told me that I first
needed to install my Windows XP, then install my Windows Express Upgrade,
then my Windows Anytime Upgrade. Even though I was extremely angry that I
should have to spend two days reinstalling my Windows Vista and all my other
software, I decided to give it a try. What else can I do? I gave it a try
but Windows XP would not find my hard drive since the partitioning of Windows
Vista is different than Windows XP. The hard drive still has the
non-activated Windows Vista on it.

How can I either get an activation key that will work, or at least install
Windows Vista Ultimate with the least trouble?

Stuart J. Cohen

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Call back, tell'em you installed XP first and upgraded, they won't know any
different.

To install XP you would have to remove the existing system volume and create
a new one from the resulting free space. XP can read a volume created by
Vista, but it can't install to one.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Andy]

I purchased a computer about a year ago. Windows Vista was still vaporware
at the time so the manufacturer installed Windows XP on the computer with the
promise that I would be due a free "Express Ugrade" Disk to Windows Vista
Business. After About 6 months I finally received my "Express Upgrade" Disk.
I later bought the "Windows Anytime Upgrade" to Windows Vista Ultimate.

The hard drive went bad last week. I tried to reinstall Windows on a new
hard drive using my "Express Upgrade" disk to perform a clean install.
Everything looked like the installation went well. I then used my "Windows
Anytime Upgrade" to upgrade to Ultimate. Everything looked all right during
the process. I then installed all my programs over the next two days. Still
no problems arose. Last Friday I started getting message windows stating that
I needed to Activate my Windows. Since my activation key is embedded in the
Windows_Anytime_Upgrade.slupkg-ms XrML Digital License Package file, I
tried to activate by phone. The technician I talked to told me that I first
needed to install my Windows XP, then install my Windows Express Upgrade,
then my Windows Anytime Upgrade. Even though I was extremely angry that I
should have to spend two days reinstalling my Windows Vista and all my other
software, I decided to give it a try. What else can I do? I gave it a try
but Windows XP would not find my hard drive since the partitioning of Windows
Vista is different than Windows XP. The hard drive still has the
non-activated Windows Vista on it.

The partitioning on the disk drive shouldn't prevent Windows XP setup
from seeing the drive. What would, however, is the lack of a Windows
XP driver (AHCI) for the interface that the drive is connected to.