Upgrading M17x from Win7 Home to Ultimate

Hey everyone this is my first post on here although I have been lurking for a while but I have a quick question about upgrading my m17x os from win7 home to ultimate.

I have a copy of win7 ultimate so I ordered my laptop with win7 home to save some money, but now I need to install ultimate to connect to a domain at work. Whats the best way to do this? Fresh install or do the upgrade option? I'm afraid of losing all the alienware files/command center so just wanted to see if anyone knew if everything would work out alright.

 

Not on a windows 7 machine at the moment, but there should be something in the control panel or start menu to activate additional features. Windows will ask for the new key and if its a higher one than than home it will activate the disabled features.

Should not be much if any impact to currently installed applications.

 

Yeah it does have that link which I clicked on and microsoft claims that everything will be fine. Im on the phone now with Alienware and the tech i'm on the phone with is trying to scare me into buying a full version of professional, not the upgrade because he says that over time some things might not work such as the touch keys and command center might not work and that if I buy a full copy from Alienware/Dell, they can help me fix that stuff.

Thanks for the quick reply peppe1!

 

Don't trust them! I have upgraded my home premium to ultimate by using key input and it's been working fine.
If any of the mentioned above goes wrong, it'll go wrong with any version of Windows (through many different ways: virus, spyware, software conflict, hardware conflict, etc...). Alienware/Dell's version is not bullet proof.

 

You don't need an Alienware OEM copy of Win7 to use any of the drivers or programs. I left my order with Home Premium, formatted my drives, and loaded a retail copy of Ultimate x64 that I had already. I haven't just tried to update the key since I prefer a clean load that I do myself. If you go that route just be sure to download the latest drivers and programs, such as CC from Dell and everything will work fine.

It's true that Tech Support most likely will not help you with issues since you didn't purchase Ultimate from Dell as most retailers do.

 

false tech suport won't even notice what version of window you are runing unless you tell them

 

Dell just wants your money, don't even bother with them.

 

Do a fresh install. I wouldn't trust the Microsoft anytime upgrade to not screw up drivers which are already finicky. I would do the fresh install, then follow one of the M17X installation threads like this one to reinstall drivers in the proper order:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...70-september-2010-incl-vbios-flash-guide.html
You can download and reinstall all of the current drivers and applications from Dell's site regardless of which Windows 7 version you are using.

 

use the Windows Anytime upgrade for this.

It's cheaper than buying Win7 Ultimate Upgrade edition.

 

Keep in mind, that you also don't have to join the domain to use its resources. Authenticating every time you connect to a domain resource isn't that much trouble. It's how I use my M17X at work. Depending on domain security policies, joining the domain may cause you to be locked out of certain settings you would like to have full control over.

 

is there a reason you need ms's unoptimized encryption or multi-language support? if the answer is no, I would suggest getting pro and skipping the ultimate name tax.

 

i have to agree plus there is a little setting that say remember my user nambe and password

 

Good point. +1.

 

Thank you everyone for the quick responses. We ended up just getting an upgrade download from Microsoft for 89.99 to professional and everything is working flawlessly. Again, thanks everyone for the quick responses it all helped!

 

I had an upgrade copy of Win 7 awhile ago, and you can still do a fresh install with an upgrade copy.

...but ALWAYS do fresh installs, doing 'upgrades' on an OS is bound to be full of errors and issues in the long run.