Unlocking Vista Ultimate with beta serial?

Hello all, way back when, I signed up for the Vista beta program, recieved my beta serial, and installed the last beta before RC1, RC1, and RC2 on my current laptop.
Now, my new laptop I just ordered it going to ship with Vista Home Premium. I plan to dual boot to XP as well, but I know that since the Vista install DVD has all the versions crammed onto it, and it chooses which to install based on your serial.
But, if you've got say, home premium installed, if you buy ultimate and get the ultimate serial, can you just put in that serial and unlock it from home premium to ultimate?
If so, has anyone tested this using a beta serial? (Which gave you Vista ultimate beta/RC)

 

forgive me because its REALLY early AM hours over here, and I may have misunderstood your question.

In a nutshell, what I got from your post was this: "If my laptop came with Vista Premium and it's Vista CD, and I bought Vista Ultimate, could I use my CD that came with my Vista Premium Laptop along with the Vista Ultimate CD key to install Vista Ultimate?"


If you were to do this with a retail version of Vista Premium, then yes, that is possible because, like you said, the Vista CD's come with all of the features for every flavor of Vista on each CD.

I would assume the same to be true for the CD that will come with your laptop. That CD will need to have the Vista Ultimate files on it to use as a "Windows Anytime Upgrade" disk for users that may wish to upgrade after purchase. Id assume using an Ultimate key with that disk would install ultimate.

I've never done so however so I couldnt really tell you for sure. Maybe someone else could shed a little light over it.

 

If you are trying to upgrade Vista Home Premium to Ultimate OR use the bundled DVD to install Vista Ultimate using the Beta key; then most likely the answer is no. Using a beta key to install a retail copy is illegal, even if you manage to somehow install the retail version using it, it will soon be blocked. You need to purchase a proper retail/OEM (upgrade) key.

 

Shoot. I was just wondering since I know MS sent out retail versions of Ultimate to some beta testers, but I never got a chance to get my free copy of Ultimate... Oh well...

 

Microsoft did not send out RETAIL versions of Ultimate to testers. They made an .ISO image available on Connect and the cd-keys were to obtained there also.

 

Oh I see. I knew they got RTM versions, just didn't know if they were downloaded or sent out.