Windows 7: Windows Vista Home Basic

Over thanksgiving, i was called in to help my aunt's Thinkpad connect to the printer. She mentioned that she'd like windows 7 so i helped her get Windows Ultimate Steal using her .edu email address. It downloaded well, and we opened up the setup file. I was just leaving, so i told her to click upgrade when the prompt came. i received a call saying a dialog box popped up saying it could not upgrade from Vista Home basic, which she was apparantly running. Does anyone know of a solution or workaround to let her upgrade to Windows 7?

Which version of Windows 7 did she buy?

According to the upgrade matrix:

http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/windows_7_upgrade_chart.png

Vista Home Basic can be upgraded-in-place to Windows 7 Home Premium or Ultimate.

That only applies within the same addressing type: 32 bit can only be upgraded-in-place to 32 bit, 64 to 64.

An upgrade license can be used in other ways, but only with a custom (clean) install.

oh. Sorry. Ultimate Steal comes with Professional, and i don't really want to do a clean install. That's why a workaround or solution would be needed.

techman, I am afraid it might not be possible, at least not in any ortodox way.
If you do a clean install you shoudl end up with a windows.old folder, which contains all your files previously in Vista, with the respective locaitons. You then have to move them to the final place, but also reinstall the applications.
I beleive you might be able to use Windows Easy Transfer tool, although it is meant for migrating XP to Windows 7, but I see no reason for not working with Vista.
In any case, please backup your personal files before attempting anything. There are chances yuo have problems in the process and have to reformat the drive, when you will regret if you didn't backup first.

This MS tutorial should also help

Since you asked for workarounds and have a legal higher-version upgrade license, maybe something in here might be adaptable to Vista>Windows 7 upgrade:

UNAWAVE - Downgrade Ultimate to Home Premium or Professional

It works like a charm between Windows 7 versions.

What you want to do if trying workarounds is use Backup imaging program like free Macrium Reflect CD to back up a system image if you cannot afford to lose it, so you can easily reimage and start over if necessary. Back up files anyway.

At worst you are then left with a clean install. Boot from the DVD and used Advanced tools to format.

All right, gregrocker has a good point. are the Reg. keys the same in Vista that would allow me to do that? and I was thinking a mod of this Windows 7 Beta To RC Upgrade Instructions | Windows 7 News hack, but i wouldn't know what to change. Any input is great, thank you so much.