Does your Vista install allows a legally free upgrade to Win7?
Yes, I can legally upgrade.
Then you are all set.
Just get an ISO image and activate from the command line using slmgr and the OEM product key.
1) boot to vista,
2) create a restore point
3) download the heidoc.com download tool
4) run the tool
5) select the version, click confirm
6) select the language, click confirm
7) the tool will then compose a url (valid for 24hrs) to download the iso from microsoft.com
8) click one of the buttons on the right (32bit or 64bit) to copy the download url to the clipboard. It will look like this:
https://software-download.microsoft.com/pr/Win7_Pro_SP1_English_x64.iso?t=0bd07c33-7e3b-411e-8f5c-d7807exxxxxx&e=1482190100&h=4ecda8d5209fa8b53e93daad34cxxxx
9) exit the tool
10) paste the url into a browser window on any computer to start the download (or use curl or wget) .
Running the tool will modify your registry, but it doesn't matter since you will be doing this on a system that you will be deleting. The heidoc tool gives you only a few chances, after which the tool will not work without rollingback to the restore point and starting afresh with step 3.
You can also download the iso directly within the heidoc tool, but then you don't really know the source of the ISO image, that is, it could be a hacked version.
One weakness of the heidoc tool is that the tool doesn't provide a sha1 hash with which to assess the integrity of the downloaded iso file. Did it download correctly? Did it get hacked enroute?
An alternative is to download some iso from the web, compute the sha1 hash, then see if the hash matches one on the microsoft website.
