"Rod" <Rod@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B054F30A-A24C-46D7-8CB8-35E15CCC5EE7@microsoft.com...[color=blue]
>I have a PC that I have had for several years. It runs a copy of XP Pro SP2
> and is "Vista" ready in terms of HDD, RAM, Processor and Graphics card.
>
> I was ready to go out and get a copy of Home Premium Upgrade, as it has
> the
> features I want, and just read I would have to do a clean install. This
> is
> essentially a reformat of HDD and start from scratch, right? That's wacky.
> I
> want to UPGRADE.
>
> I don't want the extra expense of getting Vista Ultimate as it has bells
> and
> whistles I dont want, but that seems to be the only way I can UPGRADE and
> get
> Media Player/DVD Burning functionality built-in....
>
> ...AM I reading this right? An UPGRADE from XP Pro to Vista Home Premium
> is
> really a rebuid of my PC??????
>
> Rgds
>[/color]

Personally, if your PC is that old, you are probably running some apps and
programs that may not/or won't work in Vista, so an upgrade (if you wanted
it) could be a mess when finished. If you want Vista that badly, your best
method would be to do a clean install then load your previous apps to see if
they would work. If you download and use the Vista Upgrade Advisor (which I
think is suspect in devious marketing tactics), it will list programs that
may have issues in Vista.

I did exactly what you want, and overall, it took some time to get thing
reinstalled, but I had to do a few upgrades of programs from the versions I
had in XP Pro. All in all this took around 6 hours tops over a few days. You
could do it in one sitting if you want. I had to get a newer release of Nero
specifically for Vista as one example. To add about the remark regarding
the Upgrade Advisor, when I ran it on XP Pro, I had Encarta Student 2006 on
the system, it said it was incompatible with Vista. I was ready to get the
next release this summer. I decided to install it, and it works perfectly.

Now, if you decide to do a clean install, I found there are profile (like I
had in Firefox) and setting that get stored in the Windows.old file that you
can copy over into the same profiles installed on Vista, this saved me a lot
of time too.