Vista HP -> Win 7 HP (no key) -> Win 7 Pro (valid key)

Hi Bronco, welcome to the Seven Forums.

I'm sorry to say but the scenario as you describe does not work, for the simple reason that you can only in-place upgrade (upgrade install) from a 32-bit Vista to a 32-bit Seven, or from a 64-bit Vista to a 64-bit Seven. Only 32 to 32 or 64 to 64 is possible; 32 to 64 and 64 to 32 are not possible.

If the Vista and Seven Professional would be the same bit version, then it would be unnecessary to use Seven Home Premium in between. You can directly in-place upgrade all Vista editions except Ultimate and Enterprise to Seven Professional.

If you have install media for both 32-bit and 64-bit Seven Professional, you can choose whichever bit version you want to use. Product keys are bound to edition, not to bit version or language. Your alternatives in this case would be to in-place upgrade Vista to 32-bit Seven Professional, or do a clean install with 64-bit Seven Professional.

You told us you have no product key to Seven Home Premium, so there's absolutely no reason to in-place upgrade the old Vista first to unlicensed Seven Home Premium, even if this Seven Home Premium was also a 32-bit version. If the goal is to get a 64-bit Seven Professional installed on that computer, the only reasonable and possible alternative is to do a clean install with Seven Professional, first backing up the personal stuff on Vista. You can use for instance Windows Easy Transfer to backup and transfer personal files and folders from Vista to Seven.

Additional reading:

• Windows Easy Transfer - Transfer To & From Computers
• Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version

And if you decide to get a product key to that Seven Home Premium and in-place existing Vista with it, or use the existing Seven Professional product key to in-place upgrade to a 32-bit Seven Professional:

• A simple guide to a successful in-place upgrade
• Upgrade Install with Windows 7

Come back if you need more information.

Kari

Sorry, you mentioned Seven Professional x64 in your footnote so I of course assumed that's the goal.

So, putting it simple this time:

• If the goal is to get Seven Professional x86 (32-bit) to that machine, you can do an in-place upgrade installation directly from Vista Home Premium to it. There simply is no valid reason to do the upgrade install two times, the use of Seven Home Premium in between Vista and Seven Professional is an absolutely unnecessary step. You can always in-place upgrade Vista to the same or better version of Seven.
• If the goal is Seven Professional x64 (64-bit), in-place upgrade first to unlicensed Seven Home Premium is also unnecessary because at the end you'd still had to do a clean install with Seven Professional x64 because the difference in bit versions.

Kari

This is not completely new information to me, but you finally confirmed that. Thanks for that link.

I have written that "A Simple Guide to a successful in-place Upgrade", one of the links I gave earlier. In that guide I wrote:

Kari said:

...
As you can see it is not possible to "downgrade when upgrading" i.e. you cannot in-place upgrade from for example Vista Ultimate to Seven Home Premium. You need to have the same or better edition (notice that you can in-place upgrade to Seven Professional only from Vista Business). Your current Vista needs at least service pack 1 to be able to upgrade to Seven.
...

(check it, you can see it's not been edited in 13 months )

I thought I had it right, but then I got controversial information from some other senior geeks saying that although in-place upgrading from Vista Business is only possible to Seven Professional, it does not mean you could not in-place upgrade to Seven Professional also from Vista Home editions.

Back to the topic.

Yes, in that case if you really want to keep all installed applications, user profiles, settings, files and folders, an in-place upgrade as you described would work. You do not need a product key to install Seven, in fact you have 30 days time to enter it and activate, so you have plenty of time to do the second upgrade installation from Seven HP to Pro. But now we are coming to a grey area which I really do not know; I think for Anytime upgrade you need a valid and activated copy of Seven, meaning that when you try to Anytime upgrade upgrade a non-activated Seven Home Premium to Professional, it might not work. I have never done Anytime upgrade so I wouldn't have any experience. In this case an in-place upgrade would be a better alternative because for that the existing OS must not be activated.

Anyway, when in-place upgrading, read those two last links I gave you in my first post really carefully. I'll ask some other geeks about Anytime upgrade, if it works when the old OS is not activated.

Kari

Greg, what do you think of that Anytime upgrade when the Home Premium would not be activated? Isn't Anytime meant to be used only if you already have an existing license of Seven, that being the reason to it's quite fair price?

Kari