downgrade from ultimate 64 to home premium 64 w/true image home 2011

I was the first in the family to make the jump into Windows 7, and I installed 64 bit ultimate. The rest of the family is ready to move from XP to Windows 7. I have the 3 pack of home premium(HP) on the way. I need to downgrade my license from ultimate to HP, hopefully without having to reinstall all of my software/serial numbers & data. One of the kids with a more powerful compuer will get the Ultimate. I am using Acronis True Image Home 2011 for back-ups. I would like to reformat my drive C:, so the Win 7 HP installation is to a clean HD.

A. Is it possible?
B. How would I go about doing it?

Thanks in advance for any help.

netbadger said:

I was the first in the family to make the jump into Windows 7, and I installed 64 bit ultimate. The rest of the family is ready to move from XP to Windows 7. I have the 3 pack of home premium(HP) on the way. I need to downgrade my license from ultimate to HP, hopefully without having to reinstall all of my software/serial numbers & data. One of the kids with a more powerful compuer will get the Ultimate. I am using Acronis True Image Home 2011 for back-ups. I would like to reformat my drive C:, so the Win 7 HP installation is to a clean HD.

A. Is it possible?
B. How would I go about doing it?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Just curious, why do you have to "downgrade?

Just curious, why do you have to "downgrade?

I'm trying to keep all the licensing of Windows 7 legal. We have four computers in the house. Currently mine is the one with Win 7 Ultimate. I have ordered the 3 pack of Windows 7 Home Premium(HP) online with physical media. There can only be one PC in the house with Ultimate on it. I want one of the kids, who can make use of more features in Ultimate, to have that for their computer. I can get by fine with HP. I want to be able to make the transition to HP when my order arrives.

All of them are going from XP Pro 32 bit to 64 bit versions of Windows 7. They are going to have to do a complete reinstall of everything anyway. Plus, I am the only one of the four PC's using Acronis True Image Home 2011 for back-ups. Everybody has their own favorites for antivirus, back-up, and so on.

I would encourage you to assess what features the child needs that he would not get in home but get in Ultimate. The main Ultimate features missing in Home premium are XP mode, ability to join a domain, backup to a network location, Bitlocker and ability to switch to a language of choice.

Compare Windows 7 Editions

Now, the other part of your post. You want to downgrade the ultimate to home premium without losing any of the installed stuff AND you want to reformat C: . These are 2 contradictory things- theres indeed a way to in-place downgrade that would keep ones installed stuff intact. But if you format C: obviously you'll be losing everything and will need to install windows and all your apps and drivers afresh. So please make up your mind.

Heres how to downgrade in-place.

UNAWAVE - Downgrade Ultimate to Home Premium or Professional

Before starting the downgrade, best to save an image of the current install with Acronis or macrium.

I am certainly no computer expert. That is why a lot of this falls under question A, in my first post. Is it possible? Bill2, I'll take the second part of your post first. My thinking may be all wrong, but I was thinking of it like you were installing a new drive C: You take the empty hard drive and install Windows 7 Home Premium(HP). Then you take a back-up made previously, and restore only the programs (and their serial numbers) along with the data, but you don't restore any part of the operating system, since it would probably make a very unstable OS. So an "in-place" installation, wasn't what I meant. Sorry if I gave that impression.

As to the comparison of Windows 7 editions, there are several "features the child needs", that I think are in Ultimate but not HP. By child, I mean a kid about to enter college. No matter how old they get, they will always be the kids to me. I have one "kid" who is into graphics and video. He wants to work on content for DreamScene. At the Microsoft site, they say "Windows DreamScene is a Windows Ultimate Extra." I think I have seen where it can be run on other incarnations of Windows, but it is only with Ultimate that it is supported natively.
About Windows DreamScene

From what I've read, I don't think his dreams of all his old XP games working in XP mode is realistic, but he does have an old graphic tablet with no Windows 7 driver, that we were able to get working on my Ultimate installation in XP mode.

No, is not possible to install windows on an empty hard drive and then selectively restore programs from a backup. The programs will need to be installed and activated all over again.

Thank you for your time and expertise.