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Install Vista Upgrade Without Preexisting XP

Posted by kdawson on from the loophole dept.

Johannes K. writes "It has previously been claimed that to install Windows Vista from an upgrade DVD requires having Windows XP installed on your computer. DailyTech reports on a workaround: no previous version of Windows is required at all." Anyone know whether this workaround moots the finding by LXer that during upgrade Microsoft invalidates your original XP CD-key?

2 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What a solution. by B'Trey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is only a benefit for people who don't have a legitimate claim to using a Vista upgrade license seeing as an XP->Vista install would take significantly less time.

    Not necessarily. If an XP->Vista install does invalidate your XP key (an as yet unproven supposition), then what happens if your hard drive crashes and you need to reinstall Vista? Will it allow you to use the old XP key as an upgrade? Or what if you your install of XP is old and crufty and you can no longer find your install CD? This allows you to do a pristine install. It also means that once you upgrade, you don't need to keep the XP CD and key handy in case you have to reinstall.

    Can you imagine if all of MS's OS's had this requirement?

    "What are you doing?"

    "Reinstalling. My hard drive crashed. I have to install Windows 3.1 from floppy, then upgrade to Windows 95, then upgrade that to Windows 2000, then upgrade that to XP and finally upgrade to Vista. I'll be finished in a couple of days."

    --

    "The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.

  2. Still asking questions? Ok here are MY suggestions by gelfling · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Five years, a couple of hundred million dollars and they still do installs like it's 1989?

    Dear Redmond;

    A few tips on how modern install media should work:

    1) Ask no questions except to put in the install key upfront. Run everything else with basic assumptions. Run the config AFTER installation.

    2) Allow for the easy and well documented input of a param file to create an install script on the fly.

    3) Do a hardware seek FIRST instead of preloading every old SCSI driver and whatnot. Look, you guys do a bad job of supporting that stuff anyway, so why bother?

    4) Provide a tool to EASILY and automatically move the install CD to a thumb drive and install from there. We are building machines that have neither floppy drives nor CD drives either.

    5) For god's sake provide some kind of reasonably good toolset to recover a drive from an alternate boot medium. Enough is enough already that your OS 'can't run' from Boot Floppies and whatnot to run critical tools like fixboot and fixmbr. Just write some damn tools that DO work. Or write a console that runs in toto from some source other than the install CD which many of us NEVER GET.

    6) Learn to work with LILO already. Would it actually kill you?

    7) Look at a calendar. This is 2007, start acting like there's been some improvement in installation tools in the last 20 years.