Partner program & vista upgrade

[contink]

Not of much use to most people but just in case anyone else is on the MS partner program and suffering the joys of Vista Upgrade...

I spoke to the local partner rep (based in the USA it seems) and they confirmed that you can't use the keys provided for anything other than upgrading an existing OS. I pointed out the fact that upgrading is fraught with legacy rubbish but was informed it didn't matter, they couldn't help.

The only possible help is that the next resource pack may contain the full version but they won't know for sure until the packs contents are finalised so it's not certain.

Either way I figure there's no chance of me wasting time installing XP pro cleanly so I can upgrade to vista... too many other things to sort.

[StewartKnight]

I have used our keys to build machines from scratch, so that can't be true in all cases!

[m25man]

We just choose the option not to input a product key and it lets you install any version you like!
Input the key you want to use later.

[Geoff]

Here's a workaround. It's well known.

http://vistarewired.com/2007/02/28/p...-upgrade-disc/

[mrforgetful]

We just choose the option not to input a product key and it lets you install any version you like!
Input the key you want to use later.

Does that enable you to use a Business Key with an Ultimate install then?

If you can only upgrade and don't want to do it from XP, do it from Vista!

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase...rade_clean.asp

[m25man]

Does that enable you to use a Business Key with an Ultimate install then?

Not quite, you can choose not to input a key and select an Ultimate Install but when you can later enter a Business Product ID and re-install back to Vista Business.

Why do we do it? Because we can!

I know it works because out of sheer stupidity we decided to run one up this afternoon in VMware Fusion on an IMac and used our Action Pack disks to do it.
Just to cap it off we put an Iphone skin on a pocket PC!!!

Now I've got a Mac that thinks it's a PC and Pocket PC that thinks it's an IPhone.... My god whats the world coming to!

[contink]

Here's a workaround. It's well known.

http://vistarewired.com/2007/02/28/p...-upgrade-disc/

Now why the heck didn't I find that before?!

Makes sense though I guess... thanks for the suggestions and for solving the problem... weird.

[john]

That method works fine. I am still really mad with MS about the Action Pack and the lack of the Office 2007 pre-install tools that they said in January would be in the April update, April update came with a bit of paper saying actually we've changed out mind! I am like WTF! I don't build enough machines to qualify for an account with a big name reseller so cannot buy one from them, so how am I supposed to sell Office 2007? Stupid people at Microsoft, its like they were not going to give us the R2 edition of Server or Small Business Server, how pointless!! The idea of the action pack is its a tool to help us sell MS stuff so we should get everything going as surely they want us to sell it.

[contink]

Had a moment of doubt on this so I've a specific setup to run past you.

Currently I have WinXP on this machine as my main workhorse and a number of additional partitions for data, backups, etc.. (and backups on my home server too )..

Vista is currently installed on the primary partition of the second disk and is dual booting fine... however I'm concerned that even though I'm selecting the correct drive to do a clean install to, it's still copying files to the WinXP partition so I've abandoned the upgrade/install process.

So, here's the question... will this upgrade, opt to upgrade WinXP regardless of the partition I've chosen or will it upgrade the 30 day trial vista partition?

Last thing I need here is Vista fubar'ing my XP partition... and whilst I've got Acronis True Image 10 backing it all up I'm wary enough not to want to have to trust it...

Anyone?

[contink]

Vista is currently installed on the primary partition of the second disk and is dual booting fine... however I'm concerned that even though I'm selecting the correct drive to do a clean install to, it's still copying files to the WinXP partition so I've abandoned the upgrade/install process.

So, here's the question... will this upgrade, opt to upgrade WinXP regardless of the partition I've chosen or will it upgrade the 30 day trial vista partition?

Chose the path of least risk and installed vista on a PC that I've been testing as a media PC and answered my own question.

Turns out that whilst the upgrade disk will copy files/folders to another partition it only seems to do so as a temporary thing. So long as you choose the correct partition (ie: your existing vista demo one) as part of the custom/clean install process it will install vista in the correct place.

Confirmed this by taking the plunge and upgrading my main workstation as well in this manner...

*big sighs of relief all round*