OEM XP 64 upgrade to Vista Business 64 - Urge To Kill Rising!

So I buy Windows XP 64 from the Egg and it comes with a coupon for an upgrade to Vista Business 64. My upgrade comes in the mail...no problems. I start installing Vista and it gets to a screen that asks if I want to do an "in-place upgrade" or a "clean install". The "in-place upgrade" option is grayed out. Vista informs me that I must do a clean install. The funny thing is there's a hyperlink that says "Help me decide...". Help me decide what? There's only one frickn' option! Actually, I'm very happy to do a clean install. I never, ever do in-place upgrades. Ever! So, I'm stoked. Vista loads smooth as silk and I don't have any problems. I purposely didn't activate because this was basically my test install. I wanted to see what works and what doesn't.

So a month later, I've figured it all out and I'm ready for "install candidate #2". I start loading Vista and put in my key. Vista then informs me this is an upgrade key and must be loaded over a qualifying version of Windows. Wait a minute...let's think about this. What exactly is Microsoft trying to do here?

• Are they checking to see if I'm the legitimate owner of a qualifying operating system? No...because I never activated Windows XP 64. I could have taken any OEM Windows XP 64 disk, loaded it and upgraded to Vista 64.
  
  
• Are they making people who buy the upgrade version do an in-place upgrade? No...an in-place upgrade isn't even an option. No matter what, it's going to wipe out whatever you have and do a clean install.

So what's the point?!?! Is the point to make a legitimate owner of the operating system waste 30 minutes of their life?!? Well, 30 minutes unless you make a mistake. I loaded XP configured for IDE in the BIOS. I intended to change the BIOS to AHCI for Vista. I FORGOT! I had to load XP again!!!

I swear, if I load the trial version of Windows XP 64 that I downloaded from Microsoft's download center and Vista allows me to install over the top of that, I'm going to blow! Couldn't they just have asked me to insert my XP CD and enter my XP key during the Vista install to check if I have them? So this is what I get for buying the operating system? I guess it just goes to show: No good deed goes unpunished!

Here's what you do.

Starting from your present Vista upgrade install.

Put in the same Vista install media and start the upgrade process.

Select in place upgrade.

It will install over Vista and then after it's finished, it will then accept the key and activate.

And of course back up any data you want to keep beforehand.

So even though you select "in-place" upgrade, this creates a clean, virgin install with no remnants of the previous install? No drivers, no settings, etc.?

Unless you installed a ton of stuff you don't want, it should be as good as a clean install.

You could just format/clean install from a DVD boot and then do the inplace upgrade. Then there will be only the exact same files/drivers both times.

I don't know why your XP-64 upgrade/clean install didn't work as MS says that's the only way to upgrade from XP-64. So like many things Vista, there appears to still be many kinks to work out

Audioaficionado said:

Unless you installed a ton of stuff you don't want, it should be as good as a clean install.

You could just format/clean install from a DVD boot and then do the inplace upgrade. Then there will be only the exact same files/drivers both times.

I don't know why your XP-64 upgrade/clean install didn't work as MS says that's the only way to upgrade from XP-64. So like many things Vista, there appears to still be many kinks to work out

Click to expand...

...should be as good as a clean install? I like my virgin installs virginal.

My upgrade did work. I was able to do a totally clean install after installing XP. I guess my question is this: Why does Microsoft ask for a installed qualifying OS when it doesn't really test to see if a person is licensed for the software. Why don't they just ask for the XP CD and XP license key during the Vista install? It just bugs me that Microsoft makes you jump through hoops for nothing.