Windows 7: Can I Install Home Premium?

I ran the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor and it seems all is well except it said I could upgrade to Professional, Ultimate or Enterprise. I have Home Premium. Am I out of luck?

Thank you!

If you currently have Vista business, Ultimate or Enterprise, technically you cannot upgrade to 7 HP, but with the same DVD we will show you how to do a clean install.

I see that you have Vista Business.

See the Upgrade Matrix:

http://mossblog.allthingsd.com/files...rade-chart.png

You can only do an upgrade-in-place to Professional or Ultimate, considering only the OS versions that are sold at retail. (Enterprise is not. It's similar to Ultimate; I believe that it mainly lacks the language packs.)

However, Vista Business qualifies for the use of an upgrade license. You'd have to do a custom (clean) install, which means that you'd have to re-install all programs that required installation. (That's most software.)

You can not upgrade from Vista Business to Windows 7 Home P.

Yep, it will wiser to go to Pro directly, some features might be enjoyable...

To clarify: You cannot do an in-place Upgrade to Home Premium from Business, but you can clean install using the Upgrade version: Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version

When you run or boot the Upgrade DVD, it scans the HD to see Vista then passes a flag to allow Upgrade version key - even if you then go on with booted DVD to use Custom>Drive Options to delete, repartition and/or format.

If you run the installer from Vista, it will save a windows.old folder with all of the Vista files in it so you can retrieve any before deleting it. However, this does not replace the need to back up all of your files first for a clean install.

Since you have the Home Premium, there is no sense to buy the Professional. The HP has all you are going to need. Just do a clean install, it takes about 45 minutes. You will have to reinstall all of your programs, so you need to back them up first. It is not that time consuming to do it. A clean install is good to do so that all the "trash" gets out of your system. Good Luck

Oops..he's got already H.P (readed to fast)...

I agree with those who said to do a clean installation of HP, if you find you're going back to Vista to do things not available in HP (I really doubt this) you could always buy an anytime upgrade to Windows 7 Pro.

Thanks for all the quick responses

I guess it was a language thing with my original question. When I went to use the Upgrade Advisor, I thought it was going to look at my hardware and tell me whether it was sufficient to run 7. Apparently, what it's concerned with is not hardware but OSes - as in from what to what. Emphasis on upgrade not advisor, so to speak. So I ended up with an upgrade, not a clean install. I was wondering where all the hdd space went until I saw the windows.old folder. Also, I used the Dell re-install disk that came with the computer.

So I guess I'll do it again. When I had Dell support on the phone and had to reinstall HP over the previous HP installation, it did not seem concerned that there was a previous OS installed, it just did a reinstall of 7 and nothing about formatting the disk. Should I format the disk first and then let it go ahead and do a clean install?