Expired Activation and Upgrading from Home to Business

[Jim Fisher]

A customer just brought in a laptop that has an expired Vista Home activation. We can't boot the system into Vista until we activate. The customer then purchased a valid Vista Business key.

She wants us to upgrade her system from Home to Business Edition. That's fine but an upgrade must be performed from within Vista. We can't perform the upgrade from within Vista because we can't boot into Vista.

When we boot form the DVD, the "upgrade" is greyed out and says that the upgrade must be performed from within Windows. Grrr.

So, how does one upgrade from Vista Home to Vista Business of one cannot boot into Vista becasue of an expired activation?

Thanks.

 

[Conor]

A customer just brought in a laptop that has an expired Vista Home activation. We can't boot the system into Vista until we activate. The customer then purchased a valid Vista Business key.

She wants us to upgrade her system from Home to Business Edition. That's fine but an upgrade must be performed from within Vista. We can't perform the upgrade from within Vista because we can't boot into Vista.

When we boot form the DVD, the "upgrade" is greyed out and says that the upgrade must be performed from within Windows. Grrr.

So, how does one upgrade from Vista Home to Vista Business of one cannot boot into Vista becasue of an expired activation?

Use the re-arm command. Google for it - there's plenty of info.

 

[Joe Guidera]

That's odd. You should be able to boot to the desktop and have it run in
reduced functionality mode (which is provided to avoid just the problem you
are describing). I would call product support.

Joe

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi Jim,

Try entering safe mode, then run an elevated command prompt and use
'slmgr -rearm' to delay activation. Then retry starting in normal mode and
initiating the upgrade. Did you ask your customer why they let the existing
installation expire before they acted?

When we boot form the DVD, the "upgrade" is greyed out and says that the
upgrade must be performed from within Windows. Grrr.

Yep, all upgrades must be started from within an existing, valid
installation. This is a documented, major change from the upgrade policies
of the past. Instead of a media check, an upgrade now does a license check.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

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