Confirmation that it is possible to upgrade from a retail edition to a volume license edition of Windows Vista
Just before I went on holiday, I rebuilt my company-supplied notebook PC to run Windows Vista (running Linux doesn’t look too good when you work in the Microsoft Practice of a major IT company). At the time, I didn’t have any volume license media and whilst I knew that all of the retail editions were contained in a single image on the retail DVD, that doesn’t include Windows Vista Enterprise Edition. Nevertheless, I installed Windows Vista Business Edition, choosing not to supply a product key (Vista allows 30 days before activation is required). Since then, a colleague has sent me the correct media and license keys, so tonight I was ready to rebuild on Windows Vista Enterprise Edition.
I say rebuild because I didn’t expect an in-place upgrade to work but it did - “upgrading” my Windows Vista installation to a new edition was as simple as dropping in the CD and running the installer. It seemed to take a lot longer than a fresh install (understandably) but I still have my user accounts, profile and data from prior to the upgrade. So, just to confirm, it is possible to upgrade from a retail to a volume license (enterprise) edition of Windows Vista.
Posted: 0:39 on Wednesday 4 July 2007 under Windows Vista, OS deployment.
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Pingback from Mark’s (we)Blog » Windows Vista volume activation failure
Time: Tuesday 10 July 2007, 10:11
[…] I upgraded my Vista installation from a (not-yet activated) copy of Windows Vista Business Edition t…, the activation counter was reset to 30 days; however, since then it’s been bugging me with […]
Pingback from Mark’s (we)Blog » Avoiding Windows Server 2003 R2 product activation after using non-VLK media
Time: Tuesday 7 August 2007, 19:35
[…] month I wrote about how it’s possible to upgrade a retail copy of Windows Vista to an Enterprise version and it turns out that this is also possible with other versions of […]
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