Vista ultmate upgrade

[JR]

What I have read in this newsgroup confuses me a bit. If I upgrade from Win
2000 SP4 to Vista Ultimate, I have understood that my licence to win 2000 is
not valid anymore. My question is that what if my hard disk gets broken or
otherwise I need to reformat my drive and make new install can I still refer
to my already "ceased" win2000 licence. What if I have windows XP pro
installed and upgraded to Vista Ultimate. I cannot validate that in above
mentioned case?

BR

JR

 

[Jeffrey Sparks]

You wouldn't have to wait to Activate XP before going on and running the
update to Vista again.

 

[Tom Porterfield]

What I have read in this newsgroup confuses me a bit. If I upgrade from
Win 2000 SP4 to Vista Ultimate, I have understood that my licence to win
2000 is not valid anymore. My question is that what if my hard disk gets
broken or otherwise I need to reformat my drive and make new install can I
still refer to my already "ceased" win2000 licence. What if I have windows
XP pro installed and upgraded to Vista Ultimate. I cannot validate that in
above mentioned case?

When they say the license isn't valid anymore, what they mean is that it is
now part of your total Vista license and therefore cannot be installed on a
separate machine. If you need to format and reinstall, your steps would be
to install W2K, upgrade that to SP4, and then reinstall the Vista Ultimate
upgrade, bringing your license back to the state it was in before you had to
wipe and reload. The same holds true if it is XP Pro that you upgraded to
Vista Ultimate. You will be able to activate and make genuine your XP Pro
install prior to the reinstall of the Vista Ultimate upgrade.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You would have to reinstall Win2k and then reinstall Vista. It is easier if
you just image your Vista installation right after setting it up the first
time and restore that so that if you replace the drive you do not have to go
through the whole thing from scratch again.

No one knows yet if an XP product key is cancelled on Microsoft's servers if
the software is used as the basis for a Vista upgrade edition. That is just
speculation at this point, but certainly possible. There is precedence for
it. However, should it come to that you can call the activation center and
explain why you need to reistate the copy of XP. The activation center will
be well experienced with this issue by the time you would need to do that.

What is true is that once you use a copy of Windows to qualify for
installing a Vista upgrade edition, you are out of compliance if you use the
legacy Windows on another computer or another drive or partition on the same
computer.

If this sort of two-tier reinstallation scenario is outside your comfort
zone then purchase a full edition of Vista.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

XP needs to be activated.

You wouldn't have to wait to Activate XP before going on and running the
update to Vista again.

 

[LaRoux]

Is it just me or does this whole "must install previous version and then
reinstall the Vista upgrade" thing seem like a huge time bomb just waiting
to go off in unsuspecting upgraders faces?

Look at this scenario. End user has WinXP installed. For purposes of this
discussion, let's assume it's a full retail copy just to take the OEM issue
out of the question. They then buy the Vista upgrade product and install the
upgrade. So far so good. Then they get tired of their old machine and get a
new one, one their son or daughter built for them so there is no OS
included. Now they want to move their Vista license to this new system. Are
they really going to have to install and activate their now ancient WinXP
first? Will this even be possible on hardware a few years from now?

Here's a different scenario with a little more immediacy. End user has XP
Pro x64 or Win2000 installed. My understanding is that these are both
eligible for Upgrade licensing but require a clean install. How am I going
to run the upgrade from a system that I'm about to wipe clean? Won't I have
to boot from the DVD to accomplish this? And with the rumor mill stating
that there will only be x86 bits in the upgrade products, what is the XP Pro
x64 guy supposed to do, upgrade to x86?

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I think there are too many failure points for my liking, but for some users
it is financially necessary to go the upgrade edition route. Stay within
your comfort zone. If you don't like the sounds of multi-tiered upgrades,
purchase a full edition and be done with it.

 

[Conor]

Is it just me or does this whole "must install previous version and then
reinstall the Vista upgrade" thing seem like a huge time bomb just waiting
to go off in unsuspecting upgraders faces?

Thank the thieves.