re-activating VISTA upgrade with clean re-install?

[nroiter]

I upgraded to Home premium from XP on my old Dell, which had 2 HDs. It died
and I built a new box, using the old drives, but the Vista install had become
corrupt, and I had to boot from DVD; I could not repair the install, and
could not re-install on the OS drive, I re-installed Vista instead on the
other drive,

Problem is now I cannot activate the fresh install since I had an upgrade
copy and MS is treating my reinstall as a clean install.

My choices are, I suppose, not to activate, or try to install XP again on
the second HD as an alternate boot drive and upgrade that to VIsta, but that
sounds both tedious and dicey--I can't ask MS without paying $59 bucks (!)

Thoughts welcome

 

[Alias]

I upgraded to Home premium from XP on my old Dell, which had 2 HDs. It died
and I built a new box, using the old drives, but the Vista install had become
corrupt, and I had to boot from DVD; I could not repair the install, and
could not re-install on the OS drive, I re-installed Vista instead on the
other drive,

Problem is now I cannot activate the fresh install since I had an upgrade
copy and MS is treating my reinstall as a clean install.

My choices are, I suppose, not to activate, or try to install XP again on
the second HD as an alternate boot drive and upgrade that to VIsta, but that
sounds both tedious and dicey--I can't ask MS without paying $59 bucks (!)

Thoughts welcome

Reinstall the upgrade and Vista will think the existing Vista is the
qualifying OS.

Alias

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I upgraded to Home premium from XP on my old Dell, which had 2 HDs. It died
and I built a new box, using the old drives, but the Vista install had become
corrupt, and I had to boot from DVD; I could not repair the install, and
could not re-install on the OS drive, I re-installed Vista instead on the
other drive,

Problem is now I cannot activate the fresh install since I had an upgrade
copy and MS is treating my reinstall as a clean install.

Which it was, to all intents; Vista isn't capable of performing a
repair installation.

My choices are, I suppose, not to activate, or try to install XP again on
the second HD as an alternate boot drive and upgrade that to VIsta, but that
sounds both tedious and dicey--I can't ask MS without paying $59 bucks (!)

Thoughts welcome

However, there is one more possible solution. Boot from the Vista
Upgrade CD, format the hard drive and perform a clean installation,
*without* entering the Product Key. Then, from within this
installation, upgrade (yes, reinstall) to Vista, this time entering the
Product Key.

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows: How to Clean Install Windows
Vista with Upgrade Media
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_upgrade_clean.asp

NOTE: This method is *not* supported by Microsoft.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375

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safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

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killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I upgraded to Home premium from XP on my old Dell, which had 2 HDs. It died
and I built a new box, using the old drives, but the Vista install had
become
corrupt, and I had to boot from DVD; I could not repair the install, and
could not re-install on the OS drive, I re-installed Vista instead on the
other drive,

Problem is now I cannot activate the fresh install since I had an upgrade
copy and MS is treating my reinstall as a clean install.

My choices are, I suppose, not to activate, or try to install XP again on
the second HD as an alternate boot drive and upgrade that to VIsta, but
that
sounds both tedious and dicey--I can't ask MS without paying $59 bucks (!)

Thoughts welcome

Go ahead and reinstall XP. You don't have to activate XP before upgrading
to Vista. You do not have to use the Upgrade Option either. You can select
the Custom option and then delete the windows.old file after installation.
That will give the same effect as a clean install.