Vista Voucher

camaroguy1998 · Post by **camaroguy1998** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 12:22 am

I was in BB today(1-28-07) My daughter bought a Sony VAIO Laptop, the SZ330 for $1100! Nice laptop and great price! Orig. MSRP of $2049.99 onsale for $1849.99 but they didnt have anymore except the Demo so we haggled for about a half hour and walked out with it for the $1100+tax and that included an extra battery!
So this laptop comes with a Vista Voucher deal, I'm sure you all know what this is. I want to know if anyone has a clue to what I should expect when I redeem it?
The guy at BB said it should be a copy of Vista Home Premium, which would be the equivalent of XP MCE, is this true?

I did get a chance to play with Vista for a few minutes while we haggled about price on the VAIO. Surprisingly Vista's GUI wasnt that different from XP, I was able to navigate through the basics without much trouble at all.
I'm kind of looking forward to getting my hands on Vista a little more than I was a week a go!

KnightRid · Post by **KnightRid** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 6:21 am

Depends which voucher you have, you might have to actually pay something for the "upgrade"

I have been hearing that some of them come with true, free vista upgrades, but others follow that $ amount that MS was using - I cant remember what it was, like $49 or something for home premium.

If this is for an UPGRADE - you will NEVER be able to install a fresh copy of Vista! They took away the "pop in a previous version of windows cd, validate, then install full" option! you will have to reinstall XP then upgrade to Vista! Keep this in mind because if your laptop did not come with an XP disc, if you cant make XP discs from the computer, or you have no way to make a disc image - you will need to call Sony and buy an XP restore disc to even be able to use the Vista in the future.

Ms sux so bad..argh..

ok, now you might have a partition o nthe hard drive taht has XP on it, and you can reinstall from there...but if your hard drive dies - you will be screwed again

I have heard conflicting reports on Business and Ultimate Editions being able to do the disc verification to do a full install, but everyone has says the Home version will NOT allow it.

Hope at least some of this helps

Mike

If ayone can correct/add to any of the above - PLEASE DO!! It would help out a LOT of people!

pastorjay · Post by **pastorjay** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 6:28 am

KnightRid wrote:Depends which voucher you have, you might have to actually pay something for the "upgrade"

If this is for an UPGRADE - you will NEVER be able to install a fresh copy of Vista! They took away the "pop in a previous version of windows cd, validate, then install full" option!

Where di you confirm this? I have actually heard the exact opposite in a thread on another forum. From what they are saying, it is the same as XP and previous versions... you can do a full install, just like before. I will try and find that thread.

There is A LOT of hear-say going on about VISTA right now, so I think it is important that we confim things as we write about it.

KnightRid · Post by **KnightRid** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 8:09 am

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5887
http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archive ... nking.html
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1030549296

Then I found this

http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/

at the very bottom when I looked.

"And by the way, to clear something up . . .

If you buy the upgrade version of any Vista edition, you will not be able to start the upgrade process by booting from the DVD. You'll need to start from within an existing Windows setup. Once the process starts, you're given the choice of a clean or upgrade install.

This is different from earlier Windows upgrade discs, which let you boot from the hard drive. They'd either look for a Windows installation, or ask you to insert a Windows system disc to prove you were entitled to an upgrade. No more.

Of course, this raises a question: If your hard drive dies and you must install Vista on a new drive, how do you do it? The ugly answer from McKiernan: Re-install your previous operating system, then install Vista from there.

So here's a warning for those users who buy an upgrade disc after Jan. 30: Don't throw away your Windows XP or 2000 discs. You may need them again someday."

So maybe you can start the upgrade from inside of XP then do a clean install from there, but if you have no OS you have to install XP first, then do the upgrade form inside of XP to get t the fresh install screens...

Only version of Vista I have is Ultimate RC1, and the only version I will be getting will be the Ultimate Final when they ship it to me. If I can find out hoe to get that $49 deal if you buy Ultimate for the home editions, I might get 2 of them.

Mike

Can ANYONE clear this up?

Post by **DMB2000uk** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:46 am

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... 0985/en-us

Seems pretty definitive:

SYMPTOMS
You purchase an upgrade key for Windows Vista. Then, you try to use the upgrade key to perform a clean installation of Windows Vista by starting from a Windows Vista DVD. However, Windows Vista does not let you perform a clean installation by using the upgrade key, and you cannot upgrade to Windows Vista.

CAUSE
This problem occurs because Windows Vista does not check upgrade compliance. Therefore, you cannot use an upgrade key to perform a clean installation of Windows Vista.

RESOLUTION
To resolve this problem, use one of the following methods.

Method 1
Upgrade to Windows Vista from an earlier, supported version of Windows that is already installed on the computer.

Method 2
Purchase a license that lets you perform a clean installation of Windows Vista.

Dan

pastorjay · Post by **pastorjay** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 11:03 am

That does seem pretty definitive from Microsoft. None of the other links actually have anyone who has the upgrade and has tried it. It is all speculation at this point. I am not doubting any of what you are saying, only saying that we should use caution in posting things as fact until someone has actually tried it. Even in the DailyTech article and posts about it, there is much debate. We shall all know soon enough... well maybe not soon enough, but we will all know eventually!

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 12:07 pm

yes, it's true, but it's neither suprizing (MS had to find a way to prevent "upgrade" discs from being a cheap "full version")
and if you make a disc image from a clean XP install, you should be able to quickly restore the XP, rather than a step by step install of XP and then vista (not sure yet if restoring images of Vista works) at least until you upgrade some hardware that would require a full XP reinstall.

KnightRid · Post by **KnightRid** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 1:37 pm

I am still curoius if you start the upgrade inside of XP, will it ask if you want to do an upgrade or a full install like that last blog was saying. That would be at least a little better, since you would not have all the XP crap AND Vista crap on the computer.

Mike

camaroguy1998 · Post by **camaroguy1998** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 1:40 pm

Well Damn.....I see M$ is not getting any easier!
ATM I am not sure what the voucher will be good for! I dont trust what the guy at BB told me, he lied up front about the laptop or he just didnt have a clue to what they had for sale and the possible discounts on the item we bought!
The laptop has a separate recovery partition.
But my plan is to install on a PC of mine not my daughters!
Which of course could or would have XP Pro alrdy installed if need be!

I'm still a little confused on what to expect!

I need to contact M$ and see how this voucher thing is going to work!
Thanx to everyone for the info but if theres anymore bring it on!

NO TACT · Post by **NO TACT** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:36 am

Wow not being able to upgrade with a copy of last OS is extremely sad. 2nd hand OS. MS really makes it hard to like them.