Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Vista Upgrades No Longer Allow Clean Installs

It has been widely reported in the last few days that upgrade versions of Vista will require a previous (and eligible) version of Windows to be on the hard drive during install.  As someone that always reformats the drive during installation, this kinda bothers me.  I have a bunch of XP licenses that I have purchased over the years for my family and their computers.  I dread the idea of having to deal with any hubris that is on my various family member's machines no.  I just want to be able to backup the files they need and blow the whole machine away.  I know they don't practice safe computing and I don't want to deal with any crap they have installed currently.

Anyhow, today I read of a workaround for this problem.  The gist of it is that you have to install Vista twice - once with the upgrade key and once without.  It is a hassle to be sure, but better than having a stupid side-by-side install.  I am not sure this really works, but I would be interested in hearing of any success stories.  If this turns out to be true, this is a major (and I mean major) oversight on Microsoft's part.  They really won't be able to fix it either since these DVDs have already shipped.  What a waste...

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