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Vista Upgrades Require Presence of Old OS
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Jan 28, 2007 08:43 PM
from the recovery?-disaster dept.
from the recovery?-disaster dept.
kapaopango writes "Ars Technica is reporting that upgrade versions of Windows Vista Home Basic, Premium, and Starter Edition cannot be installed on a PC unless Windows XP or Windows 2000 is already installed. This is a change from previous versions of Windows, which only required a valid license key. This change has the potential to make disaster recovery very tedious. The article says: 'For its part, Microsoft seems to be confident that the Vista repair process should be sufficient to solve any problems with the OS, since otherwise the only option for disaster recovery in the absence of backups would be to wipe a machine, install XP, and then upgrade to Vista. This will certainly make disaster recovery a more irritating experience.'"
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Install Vista Upgrade Without Preexisting XP 196 comments
Johannes K. writes "It has previously been claimed that to install Windows Vista from an upgrade DVD requires having Windows XP installed on your computer. DailyTech reports on a workaround: no previous version of Windows is required at all." Anyone know whether this workaround moots the finding by LXer that during upgrade Microsoft invalidates your original XP CD-key?
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And the problem is? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And the problem is? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And the problem is? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And the problem is? (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft seems to be confident that the Vista rep (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Microsoft seems to be confident that the Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft seems to be confident that the Vista (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Microsoft seems to be confident that the Vista (Score:4, Informative)
(http://jambarama.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday April 07 2006, @03:06AM)
I had to walk a friend on dial-up through this once over the phone. He had a liveCD but his internet was too slow to even think about doing a dist-upgrade. He's still up and hasn't had problems. It isn't the easiest thing to do, but it works, and I dare say updating Windows isn't that easy either.
Re:And the problem is? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.jessta.id.au/)
It is. It's better than all other versions of Windows. But that doesn't make is stable or secure.
Re:And the problem is? (Score:4, Funny)
(http://otc.dyndns.org/game/)
You mean a disaster like having Windows installed on a computer? A good way to solve that disaster starts here [goodbye-microsoft.com].
Dum-bee badum-bee (Score:5, Funny)
I was writing a paper, on Vista. Then suddenly the computer was like "beepbeepbeepbeepbeep" and I was like: "...huh?" And then like, half of my paper was gone. It was a really good paper. And I had to write it again and I had to do it fast so it wasn't as good, which is kind of... a bummer.
My name is Jesus_666 and I'm a student.
Are you surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Are you surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am sure a good many of them do not consider this an upgrade, but rather final delivery of the OS they were promised when they purchased their hardware.
Re:Are you surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to think I am "way the hell out there" then the author of the article is way the hell out there too. You expect that Microsoft will personally visit each persons home and ensure they return their XP disk as well as format the drive?
Fuck that! (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
1) Buy an upgrade version that requires a previous OS version to already be installed.
2) Buy the full version to install however the hell you want.
3) Use an alternate OS other than MS.
4) Download a cracked version and install it instead.
Bill Gates can go attempt asexual reproduction if he thinks I'm going to run through two installs just to get one O/S working.
Re:Fuck that! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Attempt? Bill Gates can undergo mitosis at will. Didn't you know that? It's one of the creepier things about him.
Re:Are you surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Are you surprised? ppc ubuntu (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://kurt555gs.blogspot.com/)
Now for the Vista Part. I am really thinking M$ is headed in the wrong direction. Anyone that uses Google docs, calendar, etc, can see that the OS is becoming less and less important. If internet connections will be getting faster and faster, then the Google world approach should mean that computer OS's would be getting lighter and faster.
To bad BeOS isnt around any more. Firefox, Thunderbird, Gaim, on BeOS would really be the bomb.
People will continue to whine about the DRM laded pig Vista, but maybe the time is getting near for a quick, light, new OS.
How bout a nice little ARM based lappy with a zillion hours of battery life, and
Cheers
Ubuntu has gotten a bit ... fat. (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://kadin.sdf-us.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 16, @01:46PM)
There are other distros, even other Ubuntu variants like Xubuntu, that are better choices for the hardware you're discussing. In my case, I grabbed an Xubuntu install CD and it ran perfectly, and the old 600MHz is now a nice light-office workstation.
Ubuntu has diverged from some other distros in that it's no longer what I would consider "lightweight." In some ways, it's even topheavy; for most people, this is an OK tradeoff, because it makes it feature-comparable with a modern XP system in most cases. But it also means that it doesn't do well, or sometimes run at all, on less-than-modern hardware (with some exceptions -- sometimes it works great). As a general rule, I'm hesitant to install mainline Ubuntu or Kubuntu on a machine that wasn't designed or previously running Windows XP; Xubuntu is a better match for Win98-era systems, and DSL, Vector, or Puppy are best if you want a snappy, responsive GUI on "Designed for Windows 95" gear.
How long? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.vastheman.com/ | Last Journal: Monday May 02 2005, @01:30AM)
Re:How long? (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday November 28 2005, @09:58PM)
Man, you must want Vista *real* bad. Or you just hate your firstborn?
Re:How long? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How long? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://nickstallman.net/)
From what they hear, Linux is a OS for hippies which only geeks who live in their parent's basements can use.
Another reason to keep backups current. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 20 2007, @02:45PM)
I don't think we'll find a very large corporate install base of "upgrade" versions of Vista. This will affect home users the most.
I'm more concerned with the "'per device' obsession" TFA mentions. I'm in no hurry to swap out XP/2k workstations at my shop for Vista -- and this just re-enforces that. I doubt I'm the only IT professional who feels that way.
Re:Another reason to keep backups current. (Score:5, Interesting)
The best Microsoft present to virus writers (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.sympato.ch/)
And suddenly there's a huge rush of virus with the ability to both infect the OS running on computer and the VHD file containing the backup.
Every time the user try to reverts to the VHD backup, in fact he re-installs the virus.
Thank you, Microsoft ! By leveraging your monopoly to push your own backup solution to every user, you've made it an easier task for virus writers to circumvent backups.
* : specially the clueless "My nephew installed my computer, he's a computer genius, you know !" -kind of users.
Re:Another reason to keep backups current. (Score:4, Insightful)
LB
Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.getogg.org/)
I'd really like it if Microsoft could deny OS updates to anyone running an unlicensed Windows, too. Does anyone know if Vista does that?
huh? (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.google.com/)
what do you mean "change"?
Re:Disaster recovery (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://127.0.0.1/)
Trouble is, as windows gets more 'advanced' it gets more 'stuff' that makes an upgrade go 100% smoothly. Hell, even upgrading between version updates from any linux distro you see many people have problems, just look on the forums (especially the ubuntu 5 to 6 update, gentoo during the major portage change,etc.)
Like the forums always say, it is better to install a clean version of the newest OS instead of upgrading from old, if you can that is =)
Re:Disaster recovery (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.nodomain.org/)
I remember the version check on an early version of Word (6.0? Maybe earlier). It came on floppies, and the 'full' version cost 3 times the cost of the upgrade version.
Trouble was it would accept its own installation floppy as 'proof' you owned the earlier product! So it was a no brainer that nobody got the full version..
Just Plugging Holes (Score:3, Insightful)
Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Media companies: Heh heh, if you like 520p.
Regular companies: 2000 is good enough for them.
Small businesses: Whatever looks good to pirate (not vista).
Gamers: PS3 and Wii, and XP (no game co's will make for one OS only)
Media users: 2000 or Linux. Both play things good enough.
"I just bought a Dell": Vista.
Well... I think that sums it up.
Ghost (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.adambha.com/)
Screw Upgrading (Score:5, Funny)
Fresh Install Woes (Score:5, Informative)
Out of morbid curiosity I decided to install XP, worked like a charm. I then put in the Vista CD, and it booted and installed a fresh copy of Vista without problem. (Complete overwrite, not upgrade).
So, from my experience, Vista won't even install on a totally fresh hard drive.
A co-worker had a very similar experience, but had to go with installing XP, then upgrading - which leaves you with some decidedly annoying problems with the admin controls.
Overall Vista isn't as bad to work with as some stories would lead me to believe, but there are definitely days where it's easy to see it is not fit for prime-time.
You must request bootable Vol License media (Score:5, Informative)
-ted
Are you kidding me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Are you kidding me? (Score:4, Insightful)
Your company must not use Windows as its OS. I have learned a lot about how Microsoft's gift to the world works by troubleshooting the various fatal errors it can throw. I am glad my company pays me for my time and not results. I can say after 5 years in the business that in many cases more time is saved by doing a fresh install than attempting to figure out and neutralize the cause. It is fun to do the latter, but generally wildly inefficient when it comes to Windows. Other operating systems behave better in this regard.
Re:Are you kidding me? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://novasearch.net/)
So, reinstalling the OS from scratch on a workstation certainly is a good way to perform disaster recovery; the workstation is borked, and all the user settings are server-side, so why NOT nuke the workstation?
Of course, such a company would probably also install the workstations from a ghost image. However I work for a company that does go the centralized route and yet doesn't use ghost images (we have an instruction list of what to install and how to set the machine up).
Don't believe it + security? (Score:3, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Thursday September 30 2004, @01:33AM)
Secondly, what does repair do to security? In my experience, after a repair, the system does not require all the security patches to be re-installed, yet the repair must have overwritten some files that had been patched for security fixes. In other words, some of the security patches have been rolled back, yet the system does not apparently detect this.
What is an "upgrade" about? (Score:4, Insightful)
In my opinion, an "upgrade" version, says NOTHING about how you actually install it. It's just the same thing but cheaper because you bought the old one.
I see a bunch of people suggesting that it only applies if you're "upgrading" your machine. That seems like a complete non-sequitur, given the usual rationale (as above). Are we seriously to believe that an upgrade edition is only an "install once and that's it" version? Completely ridiculous.
I love it (Score:3, Funny)
Now just be quiet and send them money.
Scumbags (Score:3, Insightful)
Now that consumer versions of Vista are not bootable, this trend will only increase. More people will say "fuck it....i'll just buy a new one".
I can't think of any other reason for Microsoft to do this nonsense.
-ted
Well, I'm not the first (Score:3, Funny)
(http://klowner.com/)
Practical joke? (Score:5, Funny)
Disasters vs Pirates (Score:5, Insightful)
it's a good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://vftp.net/ | Last Journal: Saturday December 09 2006, @09:52PM)
Well, it's a good thing the only real reasons for a reinstall nowadays is a massive virus or spyware infection.
Oh, wait... vista is windows right?
They Had To Discuss This At Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
"We're Microsoft and we can do as we damn well please because few of our customers know they have options?"
I do wish that more people would move to Linux and/or that Apple would port their OSX to PCs. (which I believe Apple has expressed no or little interest) If Microsoft had more real competition, they wouldn't be so smug and willing to hang their own customers by the short and curlies.
And what is wrong with this? XP did the same (Score:3, Insightful)
1) No shit, it is an upgrade disk
2) the XP upgrade disk required the same/similar. It required either that you had a windows OS installed or that you had the disk and could insert it.
My main argument lies with (1).
Irritating XPerience? (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.kickthebobo.com/erotech/index.html | Last Journal: Friday October 26, @11:51AM)
Disaster recovery??? (Score:3)
(http://vimrc-dissection.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday March 24 2007, @07:58AM)
Holy crap. Did I miss anything? Really, I'm working with OSs from M$ for last decade and half - and not yet encountered the aforementioned "disaster recovery" functionality.
Simple broken driver with couple of dependencies brings Windows down - try to recover that. Spending N days cleaning registry of all the crap installed along with driver (often automatically w/o even asking for user consent) - or spending one day on new installation? Choice is all yours. And not that M$ gives you tool to repair borked Windows - you have to buy them separately.
Windows doesn't have any "recovery" - all it has some excuses M$ made up so it can blame all on user later.
P.S. Compare that to Linux which I (without any backups) have been routinely brining up from totaled hard drives in under two hours. Not that Linux does have any dedicated tools for that - standard one do the job perfectly. My last record (with backup) was 15 minutes: copy all data to new hard drive (tar -C $oldroot cf - | tar -C $newroot xf -), repair installed software (rpm --verify --root=$newroot), validate checked out source code (cvs update). All was done by N-liner shell script I wrote before going to lunch. After lunch I just rebooted system and went on working as before. Duh...
Doesn't this mean you can't ever reinstall? (Score:5, Interesting)
To use the upgrade, you need the previous version installed. However, the licence agreement for Vista says:
13. UPGRADES. To use upgrade software, you must first be licensed for the software that is eligible
for the upgrade. Upon upgrade, this agreement takes the place of the agreement for the software
you upgraded from. After you upgrade, you may no longer use the software you upgraded from.
The last part seems to indicate that you are not allowed to reinstall the previous version. Thus, if your hard disk gets trashed, you can't install the previous version in order to do the upgrade.
Re:Symantec Called (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure if it's ghost or another norton product, but there is one where norton thought it was a good idea to change the partition ID to refelect the fact that it employed some form of nortons crap. That sounds logical, and well and good, except for the fact that after blowing a motherboard, it was not possible to mount the drive in windows, it wouldn't see it. You "could" mount it under linux easily enough, it was a perfectly valid NTFS partition. Partition magic wouldn't touch it which is now owned by Symantec, paragon wouldn't touch it, nothing would. And it's not like i'd tweek with the paramaters until such time as I got the drive backed up.
Symantec has some good utilities, but unforunatly many of them are bug ridden pieces of filth, and none of the utilities they buy the rights to and sell seem to be aware of each other, which is the apex of stupid when you have one product using it's own unique partition ID number and nothing else in the Nortons sphere that deals with the drive on this level understands this idiot approach.
Paragon backup seems to do the trick, without alot of bullshit. I wouldn't touch nortons ghost.
"Backup" Utility (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Sunday April 08 2007, @01:06PM)
Vista - a glossy step backwards.
Re:"Backup" Utility (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday November 10, @07:41PM)
Re:"Backup" Utility (Score:4, Informative)
MS has made the old backup utility available for download just for people like you.
Did you ever think the BKF format might be limited and based on, oh 1993 technology??
Vista - a glossy step backwards.
Jealousy is a horrible thing, now go upgrade that 1993 system.
Re:thank u bill (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:thank u bill (Score:5, Insightful)