Free Upgrade to Vista?

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Can I upgrade XP to Vista and use my XP CD Key? By upgrade, I mean, is there a CD that will just upgrade it instead of reformatting then installing?
 
1/. No, upgrades come with their own key as they are a seperate item

2/. Upgrade disks/installs will leave your files intact.
 
Let's say I buy an upgrade disc. In order to successfully get Vista on machine I will have to upgrade to XP everytime? To better explain, with an upgrade disc, can I install it directly onto a formatted HDD with no OS?
 
You can clean install, you don't need XP first in the future.

There is a workaround where you don't enter the key the first time you install Vista, that gives you the evaluation install, then you immediately install a second time and it recognises the evaluation as a previous os and off you go.

EDIT: When I set up dual boot on a seperate HDD, the Vista installer automatically disabled the upgrade option and left only the "Custom" option which did a clean install. That's probably only because it "saw" XP in the MBR and accepted it as a previous os.
 
Hey man, I would not recommend pirated software because you can get sued big time, especially from Microsoft.
 
hey man, where did I recommend pirated software?

hey man, microsoft doesn't even know I exist

hey man, don't grave dig old threads

:D
 
its not rly an old thread is it lol :p
anyway back when i was installing xp using an upgrade disc and i had no os on the hdd it simply asked me to enter a cd of another os, and once that was done it would install normally :)
guessing vista has nothing like that :(
 
its not rly an old thread is it lol :p
anyway back when i was installing xp using an upgrade disc and i had no os on the hdd it simply asked me to enter a cd of another os, and once that was done it would install normally :)
guessing vista has nothing like that :(

I think it either depended on the edition or the service pack because I recall doing that for an XP installation, but I have also had to install Windows 2000 in order to upgrade from there on occasion. Can't remember which edition or which service pack was which.

Anybody know if Vista does that? But I tend to buy OEM software anyway. I used to own one computer that was a 600 MHz P3, and it ended up having three different COAs because I am religious about putting the COAs on the computer. One of my "fellow gurus" took one look at that and said "WTF?" lol
 
guessing vista has nothing like that :(
Guessing correctly, Microsoft tried to remedy that with Vista and whilst they fixed that they left the other door open (double install)

I think it either depended on the edition or the service pack because I recall doing that for an XP installation, but I have also had to install Windows 2000 in order to upgrade from there on occasion. Can't remember which edition or which service pack was which.

Anybody know if Vista does that?
I'm not sure if it was edition/service pack specific tbh as I've only ever used XP Pro but there is no such option in Vista for sure.
 
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