Upgrading from Japanese Vista Home Premium Using US Vista Ultimate

[Guest]

I have a Japanese Sony VAIO laptop that came with the Japanese Home Premium
and I want to UPGRADE using a US Vista Ultimate version but when i try to
setup Vista Ultimate it only allows me to do a clean install. I dont want to
install Vista Ultimate with a clean install because I will lose a bunch of
the Japanes Sony VAIO drivers. I remember some error message that says I
cant upgrade because my original OS is in a different language than English.

Can anyone help? Can i trade in my US Vista Ultimate for a Japanese Vista
Ultimate somehow that will then allow me to perform an upgrade other than a
clean install? I had some from the US bring me a version of Vista
Ultimate....

Thank you!

 

[Tiberius]

That is correct you cant upgrade that way...

why dont you go to the sny vaio site and download the drivers

then do a cean install?

 

[Guest]

Unforunately the Japanese Sony VAIO site doesnt list all of the drivers and
have it available which is unfortunate.

 

[Tiberius]

Why japanese? can you look on the other vaio sites?

there are some programs that backup your drivers and let you install them
again...

if you are interested I can find its name

 

[Richard G. Harper]

Can't be done, sorry. Windows (even XP/2000) doesn't support upgrades
between language versions, only of the same language.

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Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
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[Guest]

Yes! Thank you that would be very helpful if you can send that to me. I had
already done a clean install of Vista Ultimate once but then had to restore
back to my original OS because some of the hardware components were not
working properly (webcam, keyboard funtion keys, felica reader)

Sole reason why i am upgrading to Vista Ultimate is so I can get the
multi-language user interface...switching between japanese and english when i
need to.

Thanks in advance!

I have a Sony VAIO Type S VGN-SZ73B/B.

 

[Tiberius]

Ok here are the programs I know of: these are vista compatibe

http://www.drivermagician.com/ (shareware)

http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/ (free after free registration)

http://www.driver-soft.com/ (shareware)

I have not used any of these, I know only their existance...

I hope this information helps you resolve your problems

 

[huwyngr]

I would be careful about using any software of the kind that Tiberius
mentions -- thanks for the links -- in order to uninstall from one
version/language of an OS and reinstalling on another version/language
since it seems to me that the locations might be different on the two
locations.

I know they say that the guts of VISTA is language independent but are
the drivers and the locations that hardware installs into?

I may be being overcautious but I'd strongly recommend making an image
of your original version that you could use to go back to sqaure one --
how good is Sony's recovery/restore mechanism?

 

[Tiberius]

oh yes I agree with your caution and advice....

I am not sure how these programs work exactly.. do they just back up the
driver files and let
the new windows just find them again from within that application saved
drivers or what?

Your advice to make an image before trying this is a very good one.. I
should have said it too....

thanks

 

[huwyngr]

Thanks to you too.

They sound as if they not only save the drivers but where they were
located and perhaps the concept is to reinstall say from recovery disks
but if you've added hardware it all seems to get a bit complicated.

People whose opinion I respect tend to downplay robots that act as if
they know as much as the OS programmers.

I'll ask around.