OS clean install?

[Michael D'Angelo]

I have a stupid question that I hope someone can tell me if it will work or not.

A couple of years ago I bought my brother a laptop and it had XP Media Center on it. I got it a couple of months before Vista came out. Well there was a rebate offer for a Vista upgrade disk (Vista Home Premium) when Vista was released. I received they disk a few months later and did the upgrade.

Well the laptop now needs a clean install and I am wondering if I can just use a full version of Windows Vista Home Premium (I have a full version copy that was bought for another PC) and use the product key for the laptop or do I need to install XP Media Center again and then use the upgraded disc again?

Thanks in advance,
Mike

[Draconis]

Good question, I recently re-installed my laptop with a Vista Ultimate SP1 CD using the Vista Home Premium key that came with the laptop and it went through.

However, trying that trick with an "upgrade" key code is not something I have attempted. My only advice is to try it and see what happens.

Worse case scenario, you just wasted 10-20 minutes and have to install XP Media Center.

[GlennJ84]

All Windows install disks include the full version and the upgrade version. If you do a clean install it will ask you for your original install key and your upgrade key. Use the upgrade disk for the clean install.

[Greg Alsobrook]

PM sent

[Michael D'Angelo]

Thanks guys. I am going to give it a try this weekend and see what happens.

[Michael D'Angelo]

Well I decided to do it yesterday and it went fine. At first I used the product key that was on the bottom of the laptop for XP Media Center and it did not work. I thought I was going to have to install that first and than use the upgrade disk. Well I went to get both disk and realized that the upgraded disk had a product key on it that I did not remember using before. I put that in using the full version of Vista Home Premium and it work great.

Thanks again for the help,
Mike