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Vista Upgrades Require Presence of Old OS

Posted by kdawson on from the recovery?-disaster dept.

kapaopango writes "Ars Technica is reporting that upgrade versions of Windows Vista Home Basic, Premium, and Starter Edition cannot be installed on a PC unless Windows XP or Windows 2000 is already installed. This is a change from previous versions of Windows, which only required a valid license key. This change has the potential to make disaster recovery very tedious. The article says: 'For its part, Microsoft seems to be confident that the Vista repair process should be sufficient to solve any problems with the OS, since otherwise the only option for disaster recovery in the absence of backups would be to wipe a machine, install XP, and then upgrade to Vista. This will certainly make disaster recovery a more irritating experience.'"

8 of 561 comments (clear)

  1. Ghost by adambha · · Score: 4, Informative

    This will certainly make disaster recovery a more irritating experience. Not if you ghost the drive after doing the upgrade.
  2. Fresh Install Woes by Kraegar · · Score: 4, Informative
    I decided to take the plunge and give Vista a go at work. We have a volume license deal with MS, so I grabbed a brand new, unformatted hard drive, and tried to install Vista. Nada. I couldn't even boot from the CD. Tried this in 3 machines.

    Out of morbid curiosity I decided to install XP, worked like a charm. I then put in the Vista CD, and it booted and installed a fresh copy of Vista without problem. (Complete overwrite, not upgrade).

    So, from my experience, Vista won't even install on a totally fresh hard drive.

    A co-worker had a very similar experience, but had to go with installing XP, then upgrading - which leaves you with some decidedly annoying problems with the admin controls.

    Overall Vista isn't as bad to work with as some stories would lead me to believe, but there are definitely days where it's easy to see it is not fit for prime-time.

  3. "Backup" Utility by Philip+K+Dickhead · · Score: 5, Informative

    The newly supplied "backup" utility is incompatible with the .bkf file format, which goes back to 1993, and worse yet - it cannot operate in Safe Mode. Many times when trying to restore an inoperable system, Safe Mode is the only available way to access the system!

    Vista - a glossy step backwards.

    --
    "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
    1. Re:"Backup" Utility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      The newly supplied "backup" utility is incompatible with the .bkf file format, which goes back to 1993, and worse yet - it cannot operate in Safe Mode. Many times when trying to restore an inoperable system, Safe Mode is the only available way to access the system!


      MS has made the old backup utility available for download just for people like you.

      Did you ever think the BKF format might be limited and based on, oh 1993 technology??

      Vista - a glossy step backwards.
      Jealousy is a horrible thing, now go upgrade that 1993 system.

  4. You must request bootable Vol License media by zerofoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's available, but you don't get it unless you ask for it, when you place your volume license order.

    -ted

  5. Re:How about a little confirmation? by wssddc · · Score: 3, Informative

    Microsoft confirms this behavior:
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930985/en-us

    To resolve this problem, use one of the following methods.
    Method 1
    Upgrade to Windows Vista from an earlier, supported version of Windows that is already installed on the computer.
    Method 2
    Purchase a license that lets you perform a clean installation of Windows Vista.

  6. Re:thank u bill by darth+dickinson · · Score: 3, Informative

    BitLocker, for one. I know my company is about to spend a whole WAD of cash for an FDE solution that has several gaping security holes - having something integrated into the OS (which we get for free because of our licensing agreement) would save everyone a lot of money and headaches.

  7. Re:Microsoft seems to be confident that the Vista by jambarama · · Score: 3, Informative
    Actually that isn't quite correct. As with any apt system you can do the following:

    1. Add the CD to your /etc/apt/sources.list file (I know synaptic has a gui way of doing this)
    2. If you don't want to use internet sources, comment them out with a # (synaptic can also do this with a gui)
    3. Now apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade


    I had to walk a friend on dial-up through this once over the phone. He had a liveCD but his internet was too slow to even think about doing a dist-upgrade. He's still up and hasn't had problems. It isn't the easiest thing to do, but it works, and I dare say updating Windows isn't that easy either.