upgrade from vista

[ComputerJoe]

OK, I just got a brand new HP from Frontier with 7 home prem on it. Since it's HDD was small (230gb) and I don't want to reinstall the gazzillion programs I have I used Acronis to dupe my current vista's drive to a brand new 500gig. Because I'm not playing around with my one and only I'm trying to find out what I can do to update vista to the win7 version that came with the new laptop.

Now the stupid HP recovery disk maker never did work from the original 230gig and I have a recovery set coming. I have my doubts if recovery disk set will update my duped Vista Home Prem to seven home prem. I get the feeling if I had a Home Premium 32bit ISO it might work but all I have on hand is a seven Professional disk which didn't work.

Does anyone know where I can download a SAFE win7 home ISO update with?

Alternatively I thought I read somewhere if you removed a file from the install disk it would allow you to pick between Home or a Professional update.

 

[gregrocker]

We are not able to link to Win7 downloads here as it encourages piracy. However you can borrow from a friend any Win7 DVD version, extract ISO with ImgBurn, unlock all versions using Ei.cfg Removal Utility then burn an all-versions DVD to in-place upgrade your Vista version if it is upgradable to Win7 Home Premium.

If you download from the web, be sure to check comments to see that nothing has been added or cracked, and rightclick scan the ISO with your AV and Malwarebytes

First you need to start the Vista clone or original on the new hardware. It is unlikely it will just start up, so you may need to SysPrep it on the old hardware first which removes all drivers, activation and hardware ID's. Then it will start like a new install on the new hardware, requiring several restarts to complete. SysPrep to move HD to another computer

You can then do the in-place Upgrade to see if it passes compatibility check - just let us know what happens. http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/44793-simple-guide-successful-place-upgrade.html

After reading what's involved you may want to clean reinstall Win7, so here are tips for getting a perfect reinstall of factory OEM: Reinstalling Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums

 

[ComputerJoe]

Thanks!
I got eicfg and used imgburn to make an image file from the DVD I have. But now I have "Error opening or reading the disk image file" when I try and run eicfg. This DVD boots and starts the update process until it realizes I have Vista Home and not Vista Business that I am trying to update. I have run the imgburn verification utility and it confirms I have a valid img file.

This all seems stupid since without the Product Key the disk does you no good. What is MS worried about?

Got to find someone with a Win7 home DVD.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello ComputerJoe, welcome to Seven Forums!


As Greg said, you may have better success with a complete wipe of the entire Hard Disk Drive and doing a clean install; have a thorough look through this information below and be sure to post back with any further questions you may have and to keep us informed.


After you have copied out or made back-ups of the data you need to save to external media, then boot the Windows 7 installation media to use Step One of this tutorial at the first link below to do a wipe (secure erase) to the entire Hard Disk Drive / Solid State Drive.

• Then if you do not want to create the new Windows 7 "System Reserved" partition use the outline in Step Two #2 to create, format and mark Active a single 100GB partition to do the installation to.
• If you do want to create the "System Reserved" partition use the outline in Step Two #3 to create, format and mark Active the System Reserved partition and then create and format the 100GB partition to do the installation to.

Either way, running the "clean all" then creating and formatting the partition(s) using diskpart will get you the best possible space to do a clean install of Windows 7 to; you can always extend the Windows partition to include the remaining unallocated space on the HDD / SSD or create additional Primary partitions or an Extended partition after the installation completes if you choose.

SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

DISKPART : At PC Startup

Do a Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version

If you don't want to wipe the entire HDD, you can do a partition-specific wipe of the Windows partition using the Partition Wizard Bootable Disk (PWBD) have a look at Option Three in the tutorial at this link below.

Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

 

[gregrocker]

Thanks!
I got eicfg and used imgburn to make an image file from the DVD I have. But now I have "Error opening or reading the disk image file" when I try and run eicfg. This DVD boots and starts the update process until it realizes I have Vista Home and not Vista Business that I am trying to update. I have run the imgburn verification utility and it confirms I have a valid img file.

This all seems stupid since without the Product Key the disk does you no good. What is MS worried about?

Got to find someone with a Win7 home DVD.

If you have extracted the ISO using ImgBurn, run the ei.cfg file as Administrator on it. It should prompt "ei.cfg removed."

If not, open the DVD and delete the ei.cfg file in Sources folder. Then burn to DVD. You may have to extract the files first, but maybe not.

 

[ComputerJoe]

Thanks again
I searched for ei.cfg on the DVD but did not find it, but if its in a compressed file it would not turn up. Now I know where to look I'll let you know what I find. I already tried booting as Admin but I have to use an external monitor due to another "awe shit" and the external video isn't kicking in in safe mode.

I may be able to pull it off on the new laptop cause it is booting just fine on the copy hard disk and I can login safe mode there.

I'll keep you updated tomorrow.

A clean install would be nice but I have just too many apps an update is the only solution for me.

 

[ComputerJoe]

Duh!
Run as Administrator did the job!
Thanks, thanks, Thanks!

 

[ComputerJoe]

After duplicating my orginal drive and putting it in the new laptop it did boot in normal mode and seemed to work but Device Manager showed problems with Video, sound, and net adapters. I thought that Win7 would load the right drivers during the update so I went through the update process but the win7 desktop will not come up. It gets past the flag screen and almost comes up when it flashes a quick message about the update failing and keeps looping. Now I will re-image the Vista hard drive again and get all the drivers in place before continuing. The update has to be started by running setup after booting on the Vista drive, not the DVD.

 

[gregrocker]

Be sure to choose to stay connected to the internet during upgrade here:



Updating the Vista drivers may help. You can run a fuller Upgrade Advisor which may flag exactly what is hanging the install: Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor

After install newer drivers will be delivered via optional Windows Updates. Automatically get recommended drivers and updates for your hardware

Any drivers then missing can be imported from the Support Downloads webpage for your computer or device model.