Question about installing Vista

[Syphilis]

After a myriad of various upgrades, additions, swapping, and reconfiguration, my Pentium 4-HT based Sony Vaio with 1.5 GB of RAM was transformed into a custom built AMD Athlon 64 X2 with 2GB RAM. What I failed to note throughout this whole operation was the distinct possibility that the existing copy of Windows XP Pro SP2 would fail to initialize past the loading status bar (both in and out of Safe mode.)

I figured that was among the many signs that I should upgrade my PC to Vista Home Premium (or Ultimate if it is recommended in this thread), and while a fresh, clean install is always nice, and most of my irreplaceable data is backed up, I would still enjoy keeping all of my existing program files and downloads.

My questions are these:

1. Is Windows Vista Home Premium (OEM) capable of protecting existing files on a Master hard drive as it installs?
2. If so, will it still install over Windows XP?
3. Would you still advise a clean install regardless?

Keep in mind that at the moment I am short a desktop computer, and am working on a 7 year old Dell laptop. I would like to have regain access as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading!

 

[Rike]

You can do an upgrade install right over XP. Vista will keep all your files, in theory. I've never done this myself, so I can't testify as to would well it works.

 

[ViRGE]

OEM versions are not meant for upgrade use, I don't believe you'll be able to do an upgrade install with what you have. You would need to do a clean install (which is what you should do anyhow).

 

[RebateMonger]

As ViRGE notes, OEM Vista Install CDs aren't set up to do an Upgrade. They only do Clean Installs.

If you just want to repair your XP, you can perform a "Repair Install" of XP with your XP Install CD. Microsoft and others have instructions. Note that this does NOT use the "Restore Console". It should leave your data and installed programs intact.

You could also put the hard drive back into the Sony and prepare for the migraiton to the new system by changing the hard drive controller settings to the generic Microsoft IDE controller. Again, you'd want to read up on this before doing it.

As always, you should have recent backups of any important data just in case.

 

[Rike]

I stand corrected. I'll keep in mind the installation options differences between OEM and retail/upgrade versions in the future.