How to upgrade edition?

[ish4d0w]

Hi

I'd like to ask for some help in upgrading Vista editions.

My notebook has Windows Vista Home Basic installed. I want to upgrade it to Vista Home Premium.

I do have a Home Premium key and a Home Premium installer DVD, not an upgrade key but the retail one.

So Windows Anytime upgrade is out of the question. I don't have an upgrade key or an upgrade disc.But that might not be a problem really, as the Anytime upgrader in Vista is not as advanced as in Windows 7. (It's not like you enter a key and 10 mins and it's done... You need a key and a disc and it says it takes more than an hour)
I think the way Vista's anytime upgrade works is very similar (or maybe exactly the same?) as an upgrade install?

My question is: Can I use my Windows Vista Home Premium install DVD to do an upgrade install? My goal is to preserve everything. I have all the drivers and programs and stuff installed on it. I really don't want to reinstall it.

 

[Ztruker]

Sure, just put the DVD in then run setup.exe from it once it's been recognized by the system. It may even autostart the upgrade for you.

Just remember Murphy! Things can and do go bad so it would be a very good if you did an image backup to an external hard drive using Macrium reflect Free before upgrading. You can buy and external 1TB USB hard drive for around $50 now days.

Edit: Also just found this: Windows Anytime Upgrade is no longer available for Windows Vista.

 

[ish4d0w]

Sure, just put the DVD in then run setup.exe from it once it's been recognized by the system. It may even autostart the upgrade for you.

Just remember Murphy! Things can and do go bad so it would be a very good if you did an image backup to an external hard drive using Macrium reflect Free before upgrading. You can buy and external 1TB USB hard drive for around $50 now days.

Edit: Also just found this: Windows Anytime Upgrade is no longer available for Windows Vista.

Thank you. I did it and it works. It preserved everything except these things: HP Help and Support (a customized Windows Help directory, it was removed) and HP Optimized battery power scheme. I reinstalled these, it's fine.

Oh and I'm aware Vista Anytime upgrade is no more. But this upgrade install thing still works. I'll check to see if I can update to Windows 7 or 10 if the performance is good, if not I'll revert to Vista Premium. I have made backups using Acronis True Image.

 

[gregrocker]

Why would you in-place Upgrade an HP which has the worst load in the industry of factory bloatware, which interferes with better versions built into the OS? This will be a grossly inferior install to the point you're not even experiencing Win7 perfect performance and may never if you don't do a Clean Reinstall Windows 7.

To see how much the crap Factory Install can be improved you can also Clean Up Factory Bloatware but I've never seen it claw back any more than 10-15% performance gain, while I'd estimate the HP Factory install is never better than 60% of Win7's true performance. Why not 100%? 1.5 million consumers have done the Reinstall without a single complaint!