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Upgrade Vista "Home Basic" to "Business"?

FremFrem Registered User regular
So, I just got a Vostro 1510. It had Vista Home Basic on it. I partitioned the drive, installed Ubuntu, and reinstalled Vista Home Basic, plus a bunch of drivers which Dell doesn't actually give you CDs for. I've got a CDKEY for Vista Business which I obtained from my school's Microsoft Academic Alliance thing, but no disk for it.

I note that if you right click on "Computer" and hit properties, there's a link to "Upgrade Windows Vista", which takes you to Microsoft's online store.

Is it possible for me to use my CDKEY for Business to upgrade this install?

Frem on

Posts

  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    it's worth a shot, home basic is pretty blah while business/premium/ultimate are yay

    Dehumanized on
  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    the upgrade windows vista thing is for the windows anytime upgrade, which lets you buy a key, which you don't need.

    Did the Dell machine come with a Vista DVD? If it came with a dedicated DVD, try this: re-install vista, but when you install it, enter in your key for business, not the home basic key. I'm not sure how much dell has customized it's install, but on the retail/OEM versions of vista, all DVD's are the same, they all contain the files needed for Vista ultimate, but only install what it needs based on the CD key you enter.

    wunderbar on
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  • DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    Vista install discs have every version on them. I don't know if Dell still gives out actual Windows install discs or specialized "recovery CDs" or nothing at all. The last time I bought a Dell it came with the actual discs, but this was, I think, 2002.

    Anyway, if you have a Vista CD, you should be able to just punch in your Vista Business code and use it. I think you can do this without a complete reformat, but I'm not entirely sure; there are probably dozens of side effects that I'm forgetting about. (I try to avoid Windows these days, but I'm not always able).

    Daedalus on
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