Vista Ult Upgrade Disc not letting me re-install Vista!

[John Lowenthal]

Hi all - About 6 months ago I bought the Ultimate Upgrade and upgraded from
XP. I recently bought a new motherboard and processor and when I installed
them Vista would no longer boot. I have all my stuff backed up so I thought I
would just do a simple clean re-install of Vista. I booted off the Vista 64
disc to do the re-install. I selected my hard drive and did a delete
partition + reformat so I would get a nice clean install. The problem is as
soon as I did that I got a message saying that Vista could only be installed
on a hard drive WITH A VALID COPY OF WINDOWS! I do not have my original XP
discs. Now I am left with a blank hard drive and a $250 copy of Vista that
won't install. Thanks Microsoft!

 

[will_s]

Hi all - About 6 months ago I bought the Ultimate Upgrade and upgraded
from
XP. I recently bought a new motherboard and processor and when I installed
them Vista would no longer boot. I have all my stuff backed up so I
thought I
would just do a simple clean re-install of Vista. I booted off the Vista
64
disc to do the re-install. I selected my hard drive and did a delete
partition + reformat so I would get a nice clean install. The problem is
as
soon as I did that I got a message saying that Vista could only be
installed
on a hard drive WITH A VALID COPY OF WINDOWS! I do not have my original XP
discs. Now I am left with a blank hard drive and a $250 copy of Vista that
won't install. Thanks Microsoft!

where are your XP discs ? You brought an upgrade and that means your XP
is tied in with your Vista program. If you didnt want that you should have
brought the full version.

 

[John Lowenthal]

Can you read? I said I didn't have them any more. I don't know where they
went over the last 6 years, sorry for not saving them. You shouldnt need your
original XP discs to upgrade from XP to Vista. Bottom line is I had a valid,
licensed copy of XP pro, I purchased the vista UPGRADE which is the correct
version to purchase, and now it wont let me upgrade because I wanted to do a
clean install. An UPGRADE disc shouldnt force you to literally upgrade your
current version. It should let you do a clean install as long as you did in
fact have a licensed copy of XP installed. Its ok, I have located another XP
disc from a friend and I still have my orginal XP key, so I will reinstall XP
just so I can reinstall Vista and this time I will not do a clean install. I
just hate leaving a graveyard of files whenever I reinstall an O/S. I prefer
doing a clean wipe of my hard drive.

 

[Kerry Brown]

This method of installing is not supported by Microsoft. There is a chance
that at some future date Vista may fail a WGA check if you use this method.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_upgrade_clean.asp