Windows Vista Which Route Shall I Take?

[bigslug]

Hi there,
I am going to get the free Vista upgrade that I am eligible for with my new laptop - however, there are a few thing that I want to know beforehand.
With the laptop, I do not have an OS disk, just a 'restore factory settings' type thing - so once I upgrade to Vista, there's no going back!
Does anyone know if the upgrade disk supports a clean install - or just simply the upgrade.
Also, would I benefit from a dual boot - and use both XP and Vista.
Lastly, if i upgrade to the x86 version until x64 drivers become the norm, will I be able to then upgrade to the x64 version of the OS from the upgrade disk?
Thanks
Stuart

 

[Unregistered]

Be Aware that any time you need to reload your system with a Vista upgrade, You will have to install Win 2000 or XP first, before you can upgrade. We have tested this, and Vista will install clean with an upgrade disk, but when you go to activate it, it will tell you that you did not install from within the required OS (2000 or XP).

They say the upgrade is a clean install, but it is not. It will rename the old windows folder Windows.Old and then install. This is what we have found in our initial testing.

MS has taken away the possibility to do a full clean install from an upgrade vista disk.
You MUST fully install XP or 2000 first. Updates are not required. Except that XP has to be SP2 i believe and you do need a valid key to update to XP SP2.

So, if you don't have XP or 2000 to reinstall your vista upgrade, you are SOL till you have an XP or 2000 disk, Install that then run the vista upgrade disk.

As far as I know, you don't need to activate XP for the upgrade to work, but you do need a valid key for SP2. Unsure if Vista checks that the key is valid or not before allowing the upgrade.

Again, we tried a couple of different ways, and both of them told us we had to have an earlier version of windows install before it would allow us to activate.

Also, there was no option during the upgrade to delete the partition and recreate it, or to format the drive as we wanted. The option was removed.

However, we were able to do a clean install from an upgrade disk, with the option to delete and recreate the partition, but once we were in the OS and tried to enter the activation key, it told us we needed to upgrade from within an earlier version of windows.

Clean install is not possible form a Windows Vist Upgrade disk.

Read this ........ » Vista Upgrade Edition is lame by design | George Ou | ZDNet.com



Good Luck.