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I have no compelling reason, other than curiosity, to play with Vista.
I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 that has the XP Media Center 2002 edition with service pack 2 installed. It has a Intel Core Duo 1.83ghz with 1 gig of ram and an ATI X1300 with 128megs. The harddrive is 80gig, but Windows shows the capacity as ~74. I know that there is a system restore capability on this laptop, by pressing F12 during boot, I think, so I'm pretty sure there is a partition that holds the restore program. If I get the Vista upgrade DVD, is there an option of leaving XP intact and just adding Vista as an alternate boot option?
I am soliciting information, as well as opinions and advice-like "Don't do it, you fool", etc.
I see that Vista Home Premium can be had on ebay for as little as $70"buy-it-now", and there seem to be enough legitimate as well as questionable sellers to lead me to believe that $70 +/- will get you a legal copy of it.
XP runs great for me, and I've read that Microsoft already has a newer OS in the works with a target date of late 2008 or early 2009, so, I expect that once I finish playing with the eye candy in Vista, I'll probably delete it and return to XP.
So, for this reason, I'd like to know if I can go down a path with the full knowledge that I intend to return.
Thanks.
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The upgrade version means you loose the key for your XP install. An upgrade is cheaper because you are supposed to stop using XP at that point. The Vista upgrade will only install if you agree to this – although I have seen some workarounds.
Installing Vista will most likely disable your Laptop’s auto recovery feature. Unless you can independently restore your OS and data, then a problem installing Vista could mean loosing everything.
Thanks for your inputs. From what I've read on the Vista forum and elsewhere, it appears that XP and Vista don't get along on the same machine. I think I'll just abandon the idea and perhaps either buy a used machine with Vista already installed, or install it separately altogether.
Thanks again.
The upgrade version means you loose the key for your XP install. An upgrade is cheaper because you are supposed to stop using XP at that point. The Vista upgrade will only install if you agree to this – although I have seen some workarounds.
One of the workarounds to clean install an Upgrade version of Vista:
Quote:
Use Vista's 'upgrade' version to clean-install
The secret is that the setup program in Vista's upgrade version will accept an installed copy of XP, W2K, or an unactivated copy of Vista itself as evidence of a previous installation.
This enables you to "clean install" an upgrade version of Vista to any formatted or unformatted hard drive, which is usually the preferred method when installing any new operating system. You must, in essence, install Vista twice to take advantage of this trick. But Vista installs much faster than XP, so it's quicker than installing XP followed by Vista to get the upgrade price.
Before you install Vista on a machine that you don't know is 100% compatible, you should run Microsoft's free Upgrade Advisor. This program - which operates only on 32-bit versions of XP and Vista (plus Vista Enterprise) - reports to you on any hardware or software it finds that may be incompatible with Vista. See Microsoft's Upgrade Advisor page.
Also, to see which flavors of XP Home, XP Pro, and 2000 officially support in-place installs and clean installs of the different Vista editions, see Microsoft's upgrade paths page.
Here's a simplified overview of the steps that are required to clean-install the upgrade version of Vista:
Step 1. Boot the PC from the Vista DVD.
Step 2. Select "Install Now," but do not enter the Product Key from the Vista packaging. Leave the input box blank. Also, turn off the option Automatically activate Windows when I'm online. In the next dialog box that appears, confirm that you really do want to install Vista without entering a Product Key.
Step 3. Correctly indicate the version of Vista that you're installing: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate.
Step 4. Select the "Custom (Advanced)" install, not the "Upgrade" install.
Step 5. Vista copies files at length and reboots itself one or more times. Wait for the install to complete. At this point, you might think that you could "activate" Vista, but you can't. That's because you haven't installed the Vista upgrade yet. To do that, run the DVD's setup.exe program again, but this time from the Vista desktop. The easiest way to start setup again is to eject and then reinsert the DVD.
Step 6. Click "Install Now." Select Do not get the latest updates for installation. (You can check for these updates later.)
Step 7. This time, do enter the Product Key from the Vista packaging. Once again, turn off the option Automatically activate Windows when I'm online.
Step 8. On this second install, make sure to select "Upgrade," not "Custom (Advanced)." You're not doing a clean install now, you're upgrading to Vista.
Step 9. Wait while Vista copies files and reboots itself. No user interaction is required. Do not boot from the DVD when asked if you'd like to do so. Instead, wait a few seconds and the setup process will continue on its way. Some DOS-like, character-mode menus will appear, but don't interact with them. After a few seconds, the correct choice will run for you automatically.
Step 10. After you click a button labeled Start in the Thank You dialog box, Vista's login screen will eventually appear. Enter the username and password that you selected during the first install. You're done upgrading to Vista.
Step 11. Within 30 days, you must "activate" your copy of Vista or it'll lose functionality. To activate Vista, click Show more details in the Welcome Center that automatically displays upon each boot-up, then click Activate Windows now. If you've dismissed the Welcome Center, access the correct dialog box by clicking Start, Control Panel, System & Maintenance, System. If you purchased a legitimate copy of Vista, it should quickly activate over the Internet. (You can instead activate by calling Microsoft on the phone, which avoids your PC exchanging information with Microsoft's server.)
Did this on my HP Laptop using a free upgrade Vista from HP - installed on a 2nd HD.
Quote:
Originally Posted by McTavish
Installing Vista will most likely disable your Laptop’s auto recovery feature. Unless you can independently restore your OS and data, then a problem installing Vista could mean loosing everything.
Don't know whether that's true or not, I use drive imaging and SR.
It's pretty straightforward Skaler, just follow the procedure listed by Charles to clean install an upgrade version. I did it when Vista was first released and have had no problems at all. Microsoft know that it is being done, and say that it is perfectly legal as far as their EULA goes.
Plan B:
I purchsed a used Gateway desktop with Windows media center 2005 on a 160G SATA II drive. The desktop came with a system recovery disc, so, I feel pretty comfortable that if I really ***** things up, I should be able to recover. It also has a system recovery partition, though I gather that I might lose that in the upgrade process.
I found a guy on craigslist that is offering a Vista Home Premium upgrade disk, but on the cover of the plastic sleeve it says Express Upgrade. He emailed me a couple of photos, and on the disk itself it states "Windows Vista Home Premium Express Upgrade" "This disc contains 32-bit software only."
"For use only as an upgrade to a qualifying Gateway/eMachines PC."
Will buying this disc keep me out of trouble with microsoft? The guy only wants $60, and that is not too far from some of the $70 buy-it-now offers on ebay.
I'm getting more paranoid in my old age. Am I worrying about nothing?
The disk you mention was probably supplied to someone to upgrade a recently purchased machine, and was probably an offer at the time of purchase. Some such disks can be tied to the bios of specific models or ranges of current PCs from that company and therefore might not work on older models from the same company. I have no idea about this disk from Gateway/Emachines, but you would be taking a risk unless you could find out for sure it can be used in the machine you have. “only as an upgrade to a qualifying Gateway/eMachines PC."
Run the Upgrade Advisor first and see what's what as far as hardware readiness for Vista is concerned. You probably need to upgrade the Video card/driver. You may also need a BIOS update from Gateway.
As far as the upgrade disc itself, I would ask Gateway what qualifying means, but I suspect that it has to do with marketing. But per McTavish, I would make the effort to find out.
Are you planning to updrade over MCE, or clean install? I would clean install it - least amount of trouble in the long run that way, and any current application running may be not be Vista ready and would just be an extra headache.
All I can say is be careful.
The question with these cheap discs is whether or not you get
The COA (Certificate Of Authenticity) and an UNUSED and valid license key.
If you don't care about that and just want to test it out,
save your money,there are free copies available all over the internet.
Thanks Digger,
That is really all I want to do-poke around Vista and see if I'd like it. I've been playing with computers since around 1992(Windows 3.1), and since Win 95, for my purposes, all of the operating systems have been essentially the same, and the difference, if any, is just more and more eye candy.
It would be perfect if I could download a free one, look at it for a week or so, and have it drop dead. If I find I can't live without it, at that point, I'll just go out and buy an upgrade and clean install it.
I don't know if this violates this BBS's policies, but, can you point me to a url or some place where I can download the file that I imagine is burned to an ISO image on a CD or DVD?
I do have a spare 120 gig HD and I could install it in my computer, format it, and let it be the Vista drive.
Skaler, at the risk of getting in trouble on my first post to a Windows forum: It sounds to me that Linux is just what you're looking for. I downloaded the free ISO image from http://www.edubuntu.org , burned it to CD with the instructions on the page, booted from the CD and installed it. It walked me through the partitioning so I could make it a dual-boot system if I wanted. You don't need a separate HD although I do have one and chose that for the Linux partition. I'm still in awe of all the available programs and all free.
Ray
