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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.'"

5 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