I’m not going to make a decision for you as to whether you should upgrade to Vista or not. I am running it on one of my systems and while it is working well for most things, I have found a couple incompatabilities (more on that when I upgrade my laptop to Vista sometime later next week and I start using it on a daily basis). Now that is still not a vote one way or the other since I am not the typical PC user. I mean how many of you have 3 computers on your desk along with your laptop that you plug into whatever desk you happen to be sitting at at the moment.

Pricing for the newest Windows operating system “Vista” is of course much better than purchasing the “full” version, but many of you want to install it onto a clean hard drive (even though you have a copy of Windows XP that qualifies you for the upgrade) but you have heard that you can’t install the upgrade version onto a blank hard drive. That has been found to be untrue and the “workaround” is quite simple.

Put your Vista Upgrade CD into your system and boot (I am of course assuming you have a newer system that allows you to boot off the CD, otherwise you have no business installing Vista on it). When the installation starts and it asks for the CD key DO NOT ENTER ANYTHING INTO THE BOXES, rather clear the checkbox that requests to check for updates and to activate windows when installation is complete. Select the version of Vista that you have a proper license for (Home, Home Premium, Business, etc) and go through the rest of the installation process. When that completes and your system is starting up and you are running Vista remove and reinsert the upgrade CD and it will start the “upgrade” process from the OS and this time through enter your key, and complete the installation just like you did a moment ago. This does double the time it takes to install Vista, but it will get you working from a clean slate. In theory it is the same time you would spend installing XP and then Vista, but in truth I have found in my own tests (with no lab results to back it up, just my say-so) that Vista installs MUCH quicker than XP so I personally think this is the quicker method.

Now, say you are testing Vista and want to see if it works with all your hardware and software before “activating” it and locking it to your hardware. In that case there is a nice little workaround talked about in detail in the current issue of the Windows Secrets Newsletter, I am not going to pretend that I could even give that article a better writing, so use the link to go read it yourself (and maybe sign up for the newsletter if you aren’t already a reader. There is always a wealth of knowledge passed along with each issue and I have been a long time paid subscriber for it (of course there is also a free version for those that can’t afford it, or want to check it out a bit before handing over their hard earned cash).

That’s about it for this issue, if you have any questions about any of this be sure to pass them my way and I will do what I can to help you out. As always, thanks for reading and I look forward to our next get together.

Greg

[tags]Vista, activation, extend, clean install from upgrade[/tags]