Windows Vista Vista Upgrade "stuck"

Hi, I'm new to this forum and I hope I'm not in the wrong place. I've been running XP Pro Media Center 2005 for about 2 years with no problems. I've decided to upgrade to Vista Ultimate to be compatible with colleagues for Remote Assistance among other things. I checked for compatibilty and made the necessary changes - more memory, new graphics card and a new hard drive, to be on the safe side. Again, everything's running fine in XP, but when I try to upgrade I get as far as Gathering Files 66%, and then the install stalls. There are no error codes. I've tried three times now. The first time I let it run all night. Now I've disconnected everything except the keyboard, mouse and monitor, disabled antivirus software, but it still stops at 66%. I opted not to activate during install. Is there any significance with 66%. Although I've read of ways of performing a clean install with the upgrade version, it sounds a bit fiddly. I've been advised on another board to do a clean install, and this would be my chosen path, except that I've just installed and activated Office 2007 and I don't want problems with re-activation. I'm allowed to install Office on 2 machines but I don't want to use my second licence on a new installation. I'm stuck, and would be grateful of any help. Thanks in advance.

 

A clean install is my prefered option, but now I have another question. Before I attempted my upgrade to Vista Ultimate I copied my XP partition onto another partition on the same drive so I could go back in case I had any problems - I can't afford to be without a working computer. Now, when I boot my computer I'm offered a boot menu including my XP Media Center partition and the cloned installation which has been called XP Pro by the boot manager. Both partitions boot OK, but neither will accept the Upgrade. The Media partition has the problem I've already described, and the cloned partition rejects the upgrade, explaining that there isn't enough memory. I have 2Gb RAM, but this may not be the memory required.

My question is: Do these two partitions count as two computers in terms of licencing? I'm no great fan of what seems to be restricted use of an expensive piece of software as I'm not selling it or pirating it, but the law's the law. I'm only going through these problems because of the horror stories I've read about faulty Vista installs and upgrades.

Instinctively I prefer the clean install, but not if it uses both of my available licences. I'm not sure what to do next. Thanks for your time.

 

Hi Arie,

Thanks for your reply. As a matter of course I always locate "My Documents" on a different drive for safety and easy backup, and on this I occasion after several attempts at upgrading I just bit the bullet and did a clean install. I'm just finding my way round the new OS now. Just a quick question - does the Easy Transfer procedure copy email settings, user name & password, for example? I've mislaid these details in a recent house move. Thanks.