Vista Confusion

Currently i have Xp Pro installed on my laptop, and Im thinking of upgrading to Vista Home Premium. I was looking at newegg and there are many different versions of Home Premium on their site and i dont know which one to get. What i want to do is do a clean install of Vista Home Premium. I have an external hardrive that i keep all my pictures and other media and a cd with all my computers drivers, so im not worried about losing anything on my laptops hardrive. Which version of Home Premium should i get to do a clean install?

 

Windows Vista Home Premium 64bit. OEM or Retail decision depends on your needs.

 

Second that, works pretty much flawlessly for me.

 

64 Bit may or may not be useful for you - analyze your needs first.

In fact, as far as I can see it, most laptops do not profit from a 64Bit OS at the moment.

All choices (also looking at current posts) that I can think of.

64 Bit vs 32Bit

OEM vs Retail - OEM locks the key to your machine, retail can be moved to another machine if the old copy is deleted I believe.

 

What are the differences between these two?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116485
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116470
32bit vs 64bit is not a huge concern for me, i want to be able to completely wipe xp off of my laptops hardrive and install vista clean. I would like to have a copy that i could use on another machine but i assume that will be more expensive. Will either of these do what i want?

 

Now:
The OEM is going to be locked to your system (license agremment)

The Update one may work better.

You can use the OEM to wipe another system, but you cannot legally instal it.

I'd say go with the update - but you need to have an appropriate XP (or whatever they request) disc to use it.

 

If you used you windows xp pro to connect network with domain control then you will need go buiness or ulmated if you did,nt that vista home prem

 

The first item - the upgrade version - will basically "sit" on top of your XP installation, which must be in place in order for the upgrade to work - that would not allow you to wipe your drive clean before installing _Vista.

The second item - the OEM/system-builder 1 pack - is a full version of _Vista that does not need a pre-existing XP installation in order to install, so you will be able to wipe your drive clean first (in fact, if you try to use this version as an upgrade it won't work and the installation will in fact do a quickie format to your drive before installing). Also, with this version you won't get any free support from Microsoft tech support - since you will essentially be the OEM/system-builder, you'll be responsible for providing tech support to yourself - since that doesn't bother a lot of people here, if you're comfortable with doing your own technical diagnosing, and the most you'll need from Microsoft is the database of knowledgebase articles, then that'd be a better version to go with than the full retail version.

EDIT: Actually, I think I got the two links turned around - I believe that the first link you provided was to the OEM version, and the second link was to the upgrade version, so hopefully, if you just transpose the two discussions, it'll make some sort of semi-coherent sense.

 

Is the OEM version tied to the hardware you install it on? What if you decide you want it on a different machine and you wipe it from the first and then install it on the second?

Yes, the OEM version comes with no free support from Microsoft, but that's why you have NBR!

 

OEM version is good enough... who here has called MS for technical support anyways ?

BTW there is also a work around to do a clean installation with an upgrade disk

 

OEM versions are tied to the mobo in the machine it is first installed in. As a result, you can't wipe it and put it on another machine, period.

 

Thanks for your reply. I've been researching this a bit and hearing conflicting reports and accounts of whether or not the OEM version is transferable or not. From what I've read (forums and some snippets of the EULA), the answer is that it's not transferable.

 

I’m not sure how strongly it is tied to the hardware, but I think in the worst case you should still be able to call MS and get it activated (even if you decide to change the notebook). For example just imagine that motherboard and maybe even the CPU died and you had to change it ? Does that mean you have to buy a new copy of Windows to install on the new motherboard ? I don’t think so.. most likely you can get an activation code by just calling them. It may not be morally right. But since MS is overcharging us for Windows anyway, I guess we could always justify it to ourselves . As long as you are only using it on a single PC I don't see any wrong doing..

 

PhoenixFx - I suspect you may end up lying to Microsoft when you change your laptop and phone them for a key...

Shyster1 - are you sure the Vista Upgrade has o sit "on top" of the XP instal?
I've got an XP professional Updgrade disc - and when I use that, I can format the previous system of my laptop.
Also, I can instal it on a laptop with no OS provided that I have an XP/ME disc handy - in my case it was the XP OEM disc my Medion came with...

 

I started on XP 64 when it first came out and having been using every 64 bit OS released since.

When using IE x64, WMP x64 and any other software you choose, there is a large improvement over x32. Granted this is assuming you are using 4GB's or more of ram.

With Vista, Serv 08, or SQL there is no point not load up on RAM and choose x64, it makes a world of difference.

 

Well, there you go, 4GB or more.
Now: with 4GB at the moment, 1GB is utilized by the graphics card (or other hardware) and 3GB by a 32Bit OS.

Do you profit from a 64Bit OS? Only if you have software for a 64Bit OS.
I think some people saw a slight increase in performance... is it worth it with all the driver trouble you will currently run into? Not necessarily.

Next point:
At the moment most laptop chipsets don't support more than 4GB - so you can't upgrade.
If you can have 8GB of RAM then yes, 64Bit is obviously essential, but then, what will you use all that RAM for? Only specialist applications really.

 

in switzerland, tying software licenses to hardware is not allowed therefore we can all buy oem all the time and mix and match-install on hardware as we want. that means, it's not only possible, but needed to be possible, to be legal software overhere.

and yes, microsoft blocks me from doing the online activation by reusing the key, but yes, phone activation always works.

 

OK - your laws.
Good for you.

 

I've been reading a lot of what you posted, and I agree with almost everything except this. I have been running Vista Ultimate x64 for almost a year now, and I have not run into one driver issue yet. Driver issues, while not completely eradicated, pose a very small problem to x64 users. It was incredibly prevalent in the past but not so much so today, at least not in my experience or my roommate who has been running Vista Home Premium x64.

 

I suppose it depends on your manufacturer.

If you check the Sony forum - there have been some problems with drivers on the Z series.

Some manufacturers have them on other models, other's haven't.
Some need special libraries and applications (Fn keys on a Vaio need a Sony utility/library) other's do not need them (my old Medion laptop)

Edit:
Oh, and thanks

 

I hear you.

 

uh...*looks around* Nope, no one

I did call once when I tried to do an XP install on an older machine for a cousin, Strangly enough, it creates passwords for user accounts during installation then releases them when installation is complete. That install didn't and I couldn't logon with any user's account.

 

I don't know if it has to sit on top of the old installation, but I am pretty sure that it has to locate a pre-existing installation with upgrade rights in order to install - of course, I'm open to proof that theory and reality have diverged. As your experience indicates, it may just be that you need to have to hand a CD/DVD of the full installation you're upgrading from, and not necessarily have an in-situ installation of that full license.

My main point was that the OEM cannot be used to do an in-situ upgrade and that you will lose whatever you've got on the drive if you install using an OEM disk, so it's entirely possible that I misparaphrased the rest of it.

 

I wonder if anybody with an upgrade disc could tell us for Vista...

The other question is though, would you want to do an upgrade?
You'll end up carrying baggage across from the old OS, isn't it?

 

You are 100% accurate in your post. In versions of Windows Pre-Vista (like the XP poster noted) you could install the upgrade version as a clean install as long as you produced an XP or other qualified OS install CD to the installer. That is no longer the case with Vista.

With Vista you are required to do an in-place upgrade for the install to work.

There were work arounds that involved installing Vista 2x so you could get a clean install and basically use Vista as the base upgrade so you could use your upgrade license, but since I've never purchased the upgrade version I don't know how realistic or problematic that is in the long term.

Here is one guide covering that method.

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

 

It's not quite as accurate as it once was to say an upgrade sits "atop your previous OS"

Vista uses an image based installation process--even the upgrade, which essentially installs a clean version of vista. It accomplishes this by archiving your current OS, installing itself, and then extracting programs and data from previous archive and installing them into VISTA. Normally, this works very well, but some programs have been known not to work after an upgrade (particularly those that are not Vista compliant)..

For example, many of these

http://iexbeta.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_Vista_RTM_Software_Compatibility_List

will not work after an upgrade. I'm sure there are others.

My only point here is that while an XP upgrade over ME or 98 resulted in a hodgepodge of code and an unstable or low performing system--a vista upgrade and lean install are essentially the same

 

This is great information. Thanks.