Vista upgrade issues

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Over at Windows ITPro, Paul Thurrott has some good news and some bad news for those considering moving their XP PCs over to Windows Vista using retail upgrade versions of the new OS.

The bad news is that Vista upgrade versions have two irritating flaws/features. The good news is that Paul Thurrott has discovered a workaround to these problems.

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More.


Please note

The title of this thread should have been:

Windows Vista upgrades - the good news and the bad

But, currently, the system isn't letting me use that title!

We are looking into this (general) problem with message titles, of course!

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Thurrott has discovered that there is a two-step workaround that lets you carry out an installation of a Vista upgrade version without losing the rights to use a copy of XP and, better, still, without even having to have XP installed at all!

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So, doing things this way means you'll have a clean install of Vista - from an upgrade version - that didn't need a copy of XP and didn't trash an existing important XP installation!

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Are you and/or Paul Thurrott suggesting that we install Upgrade on top of Upgrade, without using XP at all? In my eyes, that's piracy, or at the very least encouraging piracy.

I'm against Microsoft's decision to require XP to be installed prior to a Vista Upgrade, but I can fully understand why they've gone down this route.

I am wondering how and if the Vista upgrade checks that the copy of XP that it is installing on is legit.

People have got fairly good at fooling XP and WGA into thinking that a pirate copy is genuine. Can the Vista installer be fooled in the same way?

(Not that I would attempt that, OEM copies of vista are much cheaper than upgrades)

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Originally Posted by this_is_gav

Are you and/or Paul Thurrott suggesting that we install Upgrade on top of Upgrade, without using XP at all? In my eyes, that's piracy, or at the very least encouraging piracy.

I'm against Microsoft's decision to require XP to be installed prior to a Vista Upgrade, but I can fully understand why they've gone down this route.

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All I would suggest is that your read the news piece all the way to the end.

What I'm telling people there is that, effectively, clever though the workaround might be, it would be plain stupid to use it when it's possible to buy the OEM version far more cheaply and not have to do any messing around at all with dual installs.

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Originally Posted by this_is_gav

Are you and/or Paul Thurrott suggesting that we install Upgrade on top of Upgrade, without using XP at all? In my eyes, that's piracy, or at the very least encouraging piracy.

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The workaround that Thurrott suggests comes straight from Microsoft itself. Do you have an XP licence that you aren't using? Then you should regard that licence as having been upgraded.

Is Microsoft's policy regarding the protection of its own products confusing and inadequate? Yes.
Is this something new? No.

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Originally Posted by Bob Crabtree

clever though the workaround might be, it would be plain stupid to use it when it's possible to buy the OEM version far more cheaply

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But this is effectively a retail version of Vista, and we've been over the whole retail/OEM stuff more times than I'd like to count, heh.

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Originally Posted by Bob Crabtree

All I would suggest is that your read the news piece all the way to the end.

What I'm telling people there is that, effectively, clever though the workaround might be, it would be plain stupid to use it when it's possible to buy the OEM version far more cheaply and not have to do any messing around at all with dual installs.

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Oh I did. I agree with the 2nd paragraph entirely though (depending on usage).

[Aimed at charleski more] Installing Vista Upgrade, without losing the rights to use XP - presumably meaning the XP upon which the Upgrade license should be based on - can only be taken as inciting piracy. If you have 2 XP licenses lying around (at least 1 of which will no doubt be in use), then fair enough, but how many have 2 XP licenses?

If we're just upgrading, then there's no issue, though I guess the fine-print of that comes down to what the EULA says.

this_is_gav: If you want to cheat by using an upgrade version without a previous licence, then that's a decision you make, and you alone. The fact that the enforcement of the requirements is inadequate does nothing to absolve you of the burden of that decision. If you want to use this workaround to use the upgrade version without a previous licence, then that's your decision.

If Thurrott said, "Hey guys, don't bother buying the full version, you can use this without a previous licence," then that would be incitement to piracy. But he didn't, so I think you're really just putting words in his mouth that he wouldn't appreciate. Paul Thurrott has been around a long time and has very close ties to Microsoft, which is where he gained the info he posted, so I think you're going very far out on a limb here.

Personally, I have 4 separate XP licences of various types and 1 Win2k licence.

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Originally Posted by charleski

this_is_gav: If you want to cheat by using an upgrade version without a previous licence, then that's a decision you make, and you alone. The fact that the enforcement of the requirements is inadequate does nothing to absolve you of the burden of that decision. If you want to use this workaround to use the upgrade version without a previous licence, then that's your decision.

If Thurrott said, "Hey guys, don't bother buying the full version, you can use this without a previous licence," then that would be incitement to piracy. But he didn't, so I think you're really just putting words in his mouth that he wouldn't appreciate. Paul Thurrott has been around a long time and has very close ties to Microsoft, which is where he gained the info he posted, so I think you're going very far out on a limb here.

Personally, I have 4 separate XP licences of various types and 1 Win2k licence.

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At no point have I even slightly suggested I would pirate this or anything, so I don't know where you've got that from. Working in a school as I do, I have access to all sorts of discounts and even free licenses, so I have no need to pirate.

I've merely picked out some parts of the argument, namely that you can use the Upgrade license whilst it is suggested to still use the existing XP license you're supposed to be upgrading. There's no 2 ways about it - that would be piracy.

I just struck me as rather hypocritical, as if we were to discuss this in Hexus.binaries, our post would have been edited.

Yes, perhaps I'm going a wee bit OTT, but the fact is that running XP and the Vista Upgrade would be breaking the terms of the EULA, and as such, you wouldn't have a license, unless you had 2 XP licenses in your possession (which both you and I seemingly have).

Paul Thurrott is a well-respected professional writer who's been providing insights into how to get the best out of Windows for over a decade. Accusing him of abetting piracy by posting information on how to work around an installer flaw is just wrong, that's all there is to it.

Whether it's Thurrott or Hexus I'm quoting, the fact remains. I couldn't care how well respected he is in your mind. He's not a God, he's just a guy like the rest of us (and gals of course). Are you suggesting everything he writes is sacred?

He even chastises UAC, probably the best feature of Vista, even MC, which is a great improvement over the XP variant.

He's a very knowledgeable guy, one who knows his background, and I've read his pieces for years now, but he's always been extremely opinionated, and for that, I certainly can't label him professional. I take his views with a pinch of salt, and form my own opinion around them - it's not something most people seem to do with him.

I'm sure neither he nor Hexus deliberately supported or suggested piracy, but it's there in black and white.

I'm suggesting your notion that he's 'inciting piracy' is ridiculous and on the same level as trying to prevent the teaching of machine code in case someone might use it to code a rootkit. This whole discussion has become absurd, but some people just have great difficulty in admitting they were wrong.

Wrong? You really can't let something go, can you?

I never said anything about deliberately inciting it - it could well be inadvertent, and for the majority of the articles they are indeed is just pointing out a flaw. But comments like the quoted are only going to do one thing.

Tell me how else you can interpret: "lets you carry out an installation of a Vista upgrade version without losing the rights to use a copy of XP".

Fact: the moment you install the upgrade, with or without an inplace XP installation you lose every right to use that XP license. There isn't 2 ways about it. That's the way it is.

Peeps - let's just agree to disagree, eh?

Bob