InsideMicrosoft

Vista Upgrade Options Confusing, Easy To Take Advantage Of

There’s been a lot of complaining and confusion since Windows Vista showed up on store shelves about what happens when you buy an upgrade to Vista. Apparently, Microsoft has closed an “upgrade hole” that lets you clean install a Windows upgrade by providing a disk of the previous version of Windows. Well, at least Robert McLaws calls it a hole, I call it a necessity.

• Previously, to install an upgrade version of Windows, after wiping your hard drive or a hard drive failure, you would install from the upgrade disk, and insert the disk of the previous version of Windows when asked for it.
• Now, to install an upgrade on a clean disk, you have to first install the previous version of Windows, then install Windows Vista over that install.

The problem is that this is an unecessary inconvenience, more than doubling the amount of time it takes to install Windows after a hard drive or system failure, completely unecessary because the upgrade disk is capable of installing by itself, but a policy keeps it from doing that.

Luckily, before this even had a chance to make me say what I was going to say (”Don’t buy the upgrade version of Vista”), a solution has presented itself. See, you can install Windows Vista from the DVD as a trial version, then install it right over the trial as an “upgrade” to the trial version. Now, this takes almost as long as installing XP, then Vista, but at least it means you only need one disk, and the install of Vista twice is still faster than installing XP then Vista, since XP installs faster.

It also means you can install Vista as an “upgrade” even if you have nothing to upgrade from. You will be able to buy the upgrade version and install it without ever owning Windows XP, and install it on a brand new system, saving a good chunk of money in the process. Buying the Windows Vista Ultimate upgrade and installing it over itself will save you $140.

It still stinks that you have to install Windows twice to clean install, but at least your system is not infected with a previous version of Windows, just two installs of Vista. My advice: Once you’ve installed Vista on a clean system, and just Vista, save the entire hard drive as a disk image, and the next time you need to clean install, just restore the disk image. Trust me, it’s way easier and faster than ever installing Windows again.

As a bonus, look at this funny Windows Vista upgrade flowchart.

February 4th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Vista, Windows, General | no comments