dell vista upgrade question.

[colincliff]

I'm getting a dell vista upgrade which should arrive in the next couple of days.

Assuming it is technically possible, would it be legal to upgrade a different computer than the dell one which it is being sent for?

My dell is in a small office with a number of other xp machines and so i dont really see the need fo upgrading one machine in the office to dell. However at home i have a HTPC running MCE2005 and it would be nice to get it running with vista media centre to play with.

any ideas if this would bring the wrath of bill gates or not (both computers are bought and owned by me with legal os's installed)

[vinnyT]

I'm not entirely sure, but it may violate the MS EULA, as the upgrade will be supplied on the basis of the OEM OS on the Dell pc that you brought which enabled you to apply for the upgrade.

However, I don't think there is anything technical that would prevent you from doing as you suggest. As the pc you are thinking of using the upgrade on has a quallifying os on it, I doubt that Mr Gates is going to worry too much (though his bean counters may, and there're the ones to worry about).

If you do this, make sure that you have good backups of your important data, and also your re-install disks for mce 2005, just in case it doesn't work (or you don't like it).

[colincliff]

Thanks vinnyT,
I think i'll give it a go, although the more i read about mediacentre in vista the less exciting it sounds.
I think a backup disk image is probably the way to do it!

[davidlema]

I am using window vista home Premium
A Torrent just finished download on Bitlord, but when I go into

C:\Program Files\BitLord\Downloads
or my document\download files I can see the name and size of the torrent but if I click to open

the file is empty as, not it is still setting in my program uploading, so if it is uploading it MUST be on my PC somewhere? I've scanned for the file name but i just cannot find it


PLEASE HELP!

[Kevthedrummer]

I got my dell vista upgrade today for my inspiron laptop. Obviously I only have one HDD, does this mean that I will lose all my data when I install vista? I'm guessing it will. And will have to re-install all my thousands of programs!

Also anyone know how long it will take to fully upgrade it from putting the disc in to using the pc?

[gman1981]

You could just do a in-place upgrade, which just upgrades the os and keeps all your data and programs. If you do a fresh install then yes you will need to re-install all your programs, and restore a backup of all your data, unless you have partioned your HDD.
I did a fresh install of Vista and it took 28 minutes from booting up to logging into Vista for the first time.

[vinnyT]

Remember to back up all your data, including emails and make sure you have the password/number of any software you may have to re-install (esp. sware you have dloaded from the web, the info will have been sent in an email), just in case.

[doddsy]

Definitely back-up your data. My girlfriend has a dell laptop that qualified for this upgrade and it was a nightmare. McAfee wouldn't upgrade properly and a few other things didn't go the way that they were meant to and then something crashed during the upgrade process (which had taken hours up till this point). I had to use the upgrade work around (you install the upgrade as a clean install and then upgrade the upgrade) just to install vista properly.

Good luck!

[gman1981]

I didn't have to use the upgrade workaround using my Dell OEM Vista disc. It installed from fresh.