STILL confused about "Upgrade" installation process.

halp said:

jfar said:

Hi, you can only upgrade from premium on your old machine to premium on the new .

I know that's not true and that's also not what I'm asking.

I'm asking if I can install the Upgrade version on a brand new, fresh hard drive without having to install either XP or Vista first.

How can you upgrade something to a fresh EMPTY harddrive, there has to be something there in the first place to UPGRADE it to.
And if you had a Premium upgrade disc surely it is obvious
that you can only Upgrade it to another PREMIUM OS, and not another
Version of Windows.

jfar said:

How can you upgrade something to a fresh EMPTY harddrive, there has to be something there in the first place to UPGRADE it to.

Perhaps you're new to Windows and installation procedures, but you could use the Windows XP upgrade edition to perform a clean install on a fresh hard drive. You just needed to insert a 98/2000 CD during the installation process.

The idea of being able to install Windows on a clean hard drive using upgrade media is NOT a new and radical idea. This is how it's always been done. Vista changed the game with the double-install bug. I'm hoping that Windows 7 goes back to "normal."

jfar said:

And if you had a Premium upgrade disc surely it is obvious
that you can only Upgrade it to another PREMIUM OS, and not another
Version of Windows.

You must be referring to in-place upgrades, which couldn't be more irrelevant to this conversation.

Clean Install via Win 7 Upgrade

SIW2 said:

Clean Install via Win 7 Upgrade

So the definitive answer is that there's no definitive answer?

I'm seriously considering Snow Leopard at this point.

halp said:

SIW2 said:

Clean Install via Win 7 Upgrade

So the definitive answer is that there's no definitive answer?

I'm seriously considering Snow Leopard at this point.

Maybe that wouldn't be a bad idea.

Still no definitive answer for the workarounds to clean install on blank drive from upgrade media.

There must be a way - MS just isn't letting on - yet.

SIW2 said:

Still no definitive answer for the workarounds to clean install on blank drive from upgrade media.

There must be a way - MS just isn't letting on - yet.

Well I suppose I still have a month or so to sit on it until I need to cancel my pre-order. It's unfortunate that there's still no answer at this point though. Perhaps Microsoft doesn't even know how they want to handle this yet.

With the upgrade media, your $49.95 version, you have to run setup and install from
within an activated legal copy of Vista or XP. You must click custom install if your OS is WinXP. If Vista, you can upgrade. Once you click custom install, you can re partition, format etc. and then install Win 7.

You are no longer allowed to put in an old disk for validation. That will NOT work.
Also the work around from Vista will not work as the requirement is that the
OS you are currently using MUST BE ACTIVATED. This is a change from Vista days.

What is still up in the air is how to re install after a hard drive failure.