Upgrading to Vista from OEM disc

[BrianS]

I recently bought some Asus UMPC for work...well work bought them. It was shipped with XP on it and we didn't plan bumping it up to Vista. So when the disc came in the mail, my boss said do whatever you want with them. So naturally, I am going to upgrade my laptop with one of them.

I have already checked the specs on my laptop and it will have no problem running Vista. I also know there is the OEM trick when you install the trial version and then upgrade from that so it is basically a fresh install. So here is my question. Are the upgrade discs that companies like Asus or the ones that Dell send out just a standard Vista disc or are they loaded with tons of crap for that specific device. It also came bundled with a Driver/Bios disc which I'm sure is used to install the specific stuff for the UMPC. When I toss it in my computer, it shows up like a standard Vista setup screen.

So this should just be a standard Vista disc with an Asus stamp on it. On a side not. I have my Windows XP Professional disc so if I screw something up, I can always just format and go back to that.

 

[SirMille1]

Check the list of reasons why you shouldn't upgrade, google is your friend.

Unless you have a real reason to upgrade, try not to.

 

[Celegorm]

IT could be both... it could be just a version of windows, or it could have all their extra crap on it. Either way, if the parts are not right (for BIOSes and stuff) that should not be installed automatically so you wouldnt need to worry.

 

[BrianS]

Just to let you guys know and anyone else who wants to or has a copy...The Vista upgrade discs from ASUS (sent out from ModusLink), they are full versions of Vista. There is no bloat ware in it. Just the OS as if you were to purchase it off the shelf. The copies I got were Home Premium. Although they say upgrade on them, you can install it on a formated drive with no problem.

The reason I was thinking of upgrading to Vista is I wanted to have the ability of using the Windows Live service to play games like Halo 2 Vista. I am a really big gamer and liked having that option. But I quickly found out that a couple programs that I use every day and were obtained through my college (not as retail versions but as the ones that can be used with site license) will not install because it is not a retail version. I am guessing Vista is thinking it is a pirated copy even though it isn't. lol.

Here is a question you might be able to answer. Could I run a virtual machine on Vista on my XP Pro computer and use that only for gaming? I haven't ever used a VM, and from what I understand, every time you run it, it is a fresh copy. And wouldn't the saved game files that keep track of progress be wiped clean after shutting down the VM. Also is the VM fast enough to be able to support playing games?

 

[borat_sagdiyev]

ok well vm's dont get wiped everytime u shut them down. its just like a regular hard drive thing.

but a VM wouldnt be able to do games since the 3d acceleration is not good enough in VMware

 

[BrianS]

Thats what I figured. Maybe my best bet would be to just have a second hard drive I can swap out with Vista on it. My laptop is setup so to change the hard drive, I just have to take 2 screws out. So thats not that bad. Im just glad that my computer is powerful enough to be able to handle the strain that Vista can put on a system and run really smoothly.

 

[joxley1990]

You could just create another partition off your existing hard drive, and use dual boot.

How big is your HDD, because people recommend to leave at least 10GB for a Vista installation, especially if you are going to be installing things.

 

[BrianS]

The harddrive is 150 GB. After installing every bit of software I absolutely need to get by, I have about 130 GB left over. I really don't need to worry about running out of space because I have a nice 1TB NAS I have built with an old computer and a copy of Ubuntu (I love it, Ubuntu, it just sucks that Photoshop and Illustrator won't run on it. And don't give me shit about GIMP, it is nowhere near as good. lol).

So technically I could dual boot, but I really didn't like dual booting XP and Ubuntu on my laptop. I just seemed to slow things down. Im not sure why but it just didn't feel like it would keep up with me. It does have 2 GB of ram a 2.3 GHz processor so I know for a laptop, it is pretty high end (as of 6 months ago. lol).

 

[dude_se]

i used to dual boot ubuntu and xp perfectly fine, but i just got rid of ubuntu and am now dual booting vista. i would recommend a dual boot. you cant go wrong, especially if theres something you need to do in xp that you cant do in vista and vice versa

 

[BrianS]

i used to dual boot ubuntu and xp perfectly fine, but i just got rid of ubuntu and am now dual booting vista. i would recommend a dual boot. you cant go wrong, especially if theres something you need to do in xp that you cant do in vista and vice versa

When I was dual booting Ubuntu and XP and turned on my laptop, I had a black screen that asked me to choose what operating system to use. It gave me Ubuntu first then XP below that and if I didn't make a choice in 10 seconds it would automatically boot into Ubuntu. What is the best way around this so I can automatically boot into XP?

Also I know I will need to partition the drive for the Vista install, but can I just do the 10GB that is recommended and then save stuff to the C drive, or am I going to have to do basically a partition (think it is called a swap partition but not sure) that can be accessible from either Vista or XP?