Question about non-upgrade Vista Ultimate licences.

[SteveL]

I bought Vista Ultimate Retail (full licence) the other day.

Unlike the other editions this is actually sold with both 32 bit and
64 bit media.

For some time now I've had two Windows systems on my PC that I dual
boot from: XP pro and XP 64.

I've upgraded the XP pro (32 bit) to Vista, and have now activated it
(BTW, the upgrade went very smoothly, to my surprise).

I prefer 64 bit but until more there are more 64 drivers I'm stuck
with 32.

Once 64-bit becomes more viable I'd like to start using the 64bit
version of Vista.

But, I presume if I upgrade the XP64 to Vista I won't be able to
activate it because the licence is now in use. Could I cancel the
Vista 32 activation and transfer it to the 64 installation?

Or (I hope) can I have two systems on one PC as I do now with XP?

(Hell I could have bought two OEM copies (32 and 64 bit) of Ultimate
for less than this full retail version (though I couldn't have
upgraded with them), so I hope M$ cuts some slack here to people
who've paid the full monty).

 

[Rock]

I bought Vista Ultimate Retail (full licence) the other day.

Unlike the other editions this is actually sold with both 32 bit and
64 bit media.

For some time now I've had two Windows systems on my PC that I dual
boot from: XP pro and XP 64.

I've upgraded the XP pro (32 bit) to Vista, and have now activated it
(BTW, the upgrade went very smoothly, to my surprise).

I prefer 64 bit but until more there are more 64 drivers I'm stuck
with 32.

Once 64-bit becomes more viable I'd like to start using the 64bit
version of Vista.

But, I presume if I upgrade the XP64 to Vista I won't be able to
activate it because the licence is now in use. Could I cancel the
Vista 32 activation and transfer it to the 64 installation?

Or (I hope) can I have two systems on one PC as I do now with XP?

(Hell I could have bought two OEM copies (32 and 64 bit) of Ultimate
for less than this full retail version (though I couldn't have
upgraded with them), so I hope M$ cuts some slack here to people
who've paid the full monty).

The license for the version of XP that is used as the basis for the upgrade
to Vista is subsumed into the Vista license, so it is against the Vista
license agreement for the underlying XP to be installed at the same time.

You can use the same product key to install x64 Vista, but first the x86
version has to be removed. There is no deactivation.