Can I Install Windows 7 Upgrade after oem has been installed & removed

What Option Two are your referring to? I haven't linked you to any tutorial with an Option Two?

You should be following the same steps as for Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7
except using the Product Key on the Win7 disk's COA sticker instead of the one for Vista affixed to machine.

If the disk you were provided doesn't have SP1 then use the disk in Step one of the tutorial above, the one I just linked, not some other tutorial.

Your Upgrade disk will work if it has SP1 and is for the exact same version of WIn7 as on the Product Key's COA sticker. If you have 4gb or more RAM I would be sure its a 64 bit installer.

Hi again Greg, and thanks for all your help. Earlier on this thread someone put a link to the clean install with upgrade disc. Because I decided to use my upgrade disc instead of the oem that came with the laptop, I followed that link. There were four options and one or two of them mentioned problems with activating, so I thought I'd choose the simpler one. Which has installed it, but as you say I don't have a clean install now. I have been doing all this while in bed with flu, so apologise if my concentration has been a bit off!

Clearly now I would like to start from scratch and have a clean install. But as it is an upgrade disc, I was wondering whether, if I activated now, with the product key (it's a retail copy with product key), and then started again doing a clean install and formatting the disc - if that would mean I avoid the difficulties mentioned in the upgrade tutorial of clean installing after reformatting the disc.

So I suppose what I'm asking now is - as I have done an upgrade with an upgrade disc, using the custom install but not formatting the disc and partitions - can i now do a clean install and reformat?

Only have 2gb ram so installed 32 bit.

Hi. Apologies - just saw your message this morning (am in the Uk so timescale different). That was very kind of you to offer to help me through Skype.

All the drivers seem to have downloaded. I did the first run of Windows updates. So it seems it will install fine. As you say, the drivers for the model are all on the website and I have those on usb. There are a couple of hardware ones that need to go in, and I saw the tutorial specific to Sony Vaio's for this bit, where it lists which drivers and what order to install them.

I looked at your link for doing a clean install - factory oem, thank you. I did everything but clearing the partitions. I guess I didn't like the idea of robocalling (had a bad experience with this once!) and would prefer to do a method which ensures my activation goes through on line.

Anyway - I have realised that this post was originally on a different topic and I have moved on to another topic, so have started a fresh post on the current topic.

Ok. I activated online and all went smoothly. I have now reinstalled from scratch, selected custom install, deleted the partitions, and installed. I needed to activate again, which I did, and all went smoothly. Thanks for your help!