vista upgrade question

[richard]

I just bought a laptop with XP and an upgrade coupon for Vista.

I am wondering how these upgrades will work. Is the upgrade disk a
self-contained Vista os? If I reformat the disk with XP, would the
upgrade install Vista?

Or, does the upgrade depend upon XP and install in some mysterious way
"over" XP?

I didn't see anything on MS website that explains all this.

Thanks

 

[Theo]

I think you're going to have to wait until you have the
Upgrade in your hands and then read whatever information is
included with it. The consensus currently is that you will
have to start the upgrade from within XP and that the
upgrade will affect your current installation, kinda like
install SP1 or SP2 was. Supposedly you will not have the
option to boot from the DVD and do a totally clean
installation with an Upgrade disc.

 

[Richard G. Harper]

How the upgrade will work will depend on your computer manufacturer as they
are providing the upgrade package - not Microsoft.

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[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

Richard;
A Vista upgrade CD will NOT install on a clean hard drive.
Inserting a qualifying CD will not work as it does for Windows XP.
You will need to install and activate the qualifying operating system and
then upgrade from there.
Microsoft is doing this change to help verify the qualifying OS is
legitimate.
This applies to the retail upgrades and I assume the OEM as well.
Contact the OEM for details.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

It will be a proprietary dvd and you will need to run it from the XP
desktop. It upgrades XP to Vista by doing a custom install. XP will be
rolled up into a windows.old file. Most likely the dvd will only perform
this function and will not be usable on another computer or a computer
without an OS. If you format the hard drive you will have to reinstall XP
with the manufacturer's restore methods before running the upgrade, so don't
bother.

 

[Barry Watzman]

No one knows how they will work, and they MAY work differently for
different OEMs. You won't know what you get until you get it. But
unless you have XP Home (and hopefully you don't), the upgrade is free,
so take it. If you have XP Home, then the upgrade is usually $40 to $60
and for that you get only the crappy, horrible Vista Home Basic. In
that case, it might not even be worth taking.

 

[Mike]

So thinking ahead here, as Microsoft didn't - I buy Vista Ultimate Upgrade -
upgrade from my XP Pro, A few months, a year down the line I upgrade or get
new hard drives because of eventual failure - I have to format and install
XP Pro again - keeping all drivers, information necessary to install and
activate it - then turn around and upgrade back to Vista, install those
drivers, etc - and activate it. Basically making it a very cumbersome
process and increasing the work for the Geek Squad at the local retail
store - (I'm sure they love it) - for the average consumer who would be
confused or daunted by this process.

Or fork out almost double the money for a full Vista copy.

Please post when then class action against MS is filed so that we can all
join.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Do an image backup. If the drive fails, replace the image. You probably
won't see any lawsuit succeed as the upgrade version does exactly what it
says it does. No false or misleading advertising there.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org