Installing vista ultimate on a clean drive and cloning vista to 2n

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Guest

Hello,

I came across something I've never seen in MS products (since windows 2.0).

When I installed my XP-pro upgrade I had the option to install it on a clean
HDD. The XP installation just asked me to insert my copy of 2000/98/95, same
thing when I upgraded to 2000.

A brief history:
I bought my vista ultimate upgrade the day after MS released it. Because of
hardware limitations I didn't install it until yesterday when I got my new
motherboard, graphics card and 2G of ram.

First I did an upgrade on a cloned HDD and everything went fine but many
files and drivers and stuff I didn't want remained in my HDD so I decided to
do a fresh (clean) install. To my surprise the vista (upgrade version)
installation does not support this installation path (the product key you
entered.... blah, blah)

So I ignored the product key screen and continued... (You should enter a
product key because if you don't we'll do this and that... blah,blah) I
ignored the insinuations of being a pirate and a thief and decided to
continue. Ok vista finished a clean installation and rebooted for the first
time. Now I can activate vista right? WRONG! the key I entered is still
invalid for the type of installation.

OK I called MS tech support in India and a very helpful guy named
"Sharifssgt" or something like that gave me a solution. After I reactivated
vista I did a disk clone using ghost 2003. I did a test on the HDD clone and
vista said there was a problem and asked me to insert the vista CD/DVD
installation disk and repair vista.

After I repaired vista everything booted fine which brings me to ask this
two questions.

1. Is there a more 'conventional' way of doing a clean (blank HDD) install
using my copy of vista ultimate (upgrade version)?

2. What programs within vista can be used to clone a HDD for backup
purposes? I don't want to clone a HDD just to find out that a booloader was
installed and it can't be used in a stand alone configuration.

Thanks
 
starstuff said:
Hello,

I came across something I've never seen in MS products (since windows
2.0).

When I installed my XP-pro upgrade I had the option to install it on a
clean
HDD. The XP installation just asked me to insert my copy of 2000/98/95,
same
thing when I upgraded to 2000.

A brief history:
I bought my vista ultimate upgrade the day after MS released it. Because
of
hardware limitations I didn't install it until yesterday when I got my new
motherboard, graphics card and 2G of ram.

First I did an upgrade on a cloned HDD and everything went fine but many
files and drivers and stuff I didn't want remained in my HDD so I decided
to
do a fresh (clean) install. To my surprise the vista (upgrade version)
installation does not support this installation path (the product key you
entered.... blah, blah)

So I ignored the product key screen and continued... (You should enter a
product key because if you don't we'll do this and that... blah,blah) I
ignored the insinuations of being a pirate and a thief and decided to
continue. Ok vista finished a clean installation and rebooted for the
first
time. Now I can activate vista right? WRONG! the key I entered is still
invalid for the type of installation.

OK I called MS tech support in India and a very helpful guy named
"Sharifssgt" or something like that gave me a solution. After I
reactivated
vista I did a disk clone using ghost 2003. I did a test on the HDD clone
and
vista said there was a problem and asked me to insert the vista CD/DVD
installation disk and repair vista.

After I repaired vista everything booted fine which brings me to ask this
two questions.

1. Is there a more 'conventional' way of doing a clean (blank HDD) install
using my copy of vista ultimate (upgrade version)?

2. What programs within vista can be used to clone a HDD for backup
purposes? I don't want to clone a HDD just to find out that a booloader
was
installed and it can't be used in a stand alone configuration.
Click to expand...

Vista does not do a shiny media check for the upgrade. It is intended to be
installed from the desktop of the installed, qualifying OS. The way around
this, if you want to install without first having the qualifying OS
installed, but one still needs to own a qualifying product to use the
upgrade version is a double install method as you discovered. Install once
without entering the product key, then do an upgrade of that, now entering
the product key. Here is a link to an article for info on it.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5932

Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate come with Complete PC backup which
is drive imaging. When run from the GUI you must image the boot / system
partition or both if they are different. And then you can choose whatever
other partitions you want to include. Restore can only be done by restoring
the complete image by booting the Vista DVD. You cannot restore individual
files or folders from this image. There is a command line tools that allows
you to image individual partitions without having to image the boot/system
partitions but I don't know if restore works the same way, I assume so, by
booting from the Vista DVD. Again you cannot restore individual files.

For more control and flexibility look at Acronis True Image version 10. The
latest builds work in both XP and Vista. It will do partition and drive
imaging, full, incremental and differential images, file backup and disk
cloning. Restores can be done on a file, folder, partition or drive basis.
 
Thanks for the reply,

Yes the MS tech recommended the upgrade from vista ultimate to vista
ultimate... weird but it worked. I just wish the vista upgrade had the same
options as previous MS upgrades.

I don't know if this obtuse options are there to deter pirates but it sure
doesn't make any easier for legal owners. Im sure pirated versions of vista
will be much more easier to install than legal copies.

I have ultimate so I will try the backup options that you mentioned.

thanks again
 
starstuff said:
Thanks for the reply,

Yes the MS tech recommended the upgrade from vista ultimate to vista
ultimate... weird but it worked. I just wish the vista upgrade had the
same
options as previous MS upgrades.

I don't know if this obtuse options are there to deter pirates but it sure
doesn't make any easier for legal owners. Im sure pirated versions of
vista
will be much more easier to install than legal copies.

I have ultimate so I will try the backup options that you mentioned.

thanks again
Click to expand...

<snip>

You're welcome.

It was believed, and I think it's true, that MS changed the upgrade process
in Vista from the shiny media check of its predecessors, because it was too
easy to just borrow a qualifying CD, stick it in and be able to use the
upgrade version without owning a qualifying OS

What is unclear though, after going to all the trouble of changing the
process and requiring the update to be started from the desktop of the
installed OS (and it was originally believed that the qualifying OS had to
be activated as well, which doesn't seem to be the case now either), why MS
allowed this alternate, double installation route, where one can clean
install an upgrade version without the qualifying OS being installed.

It's certainly true you can't use technology to stop all things you don't
want to happen from happening, and the governing document is the EULA, (by
which the person using an upgrade version must own a qualifying OS) but MS
has not, to my knowledge, spoken out as to why this double install method,
exists. Intentional or a big goof up? If intentional, why, and why not
explain the reasons?

Ultimate also offers a file backup program. That is targeted at beginner
level users; it's easy but not very configurable. It backs up by file types
but there is no provision to specify or exclude particular folders.

I prefer redundancy in backups. I use both Complete PC Backup in Ultimate
and Acronis True Image for this. You can also do file backups with ATI;
save them to different media than where you would store an image. ATI is
quite useful.

One other limitation of Complete PC Backup is that it will only keep the
most current backup backup location. You cannot have several generations of
backups in the same place. After the initial backup, subsequent backups are
differential in that only what has been changed is saved, but one only sees
the one full backup set which is a combination of the previous and the
current. Contingent on space availability the replaced files from the
original backup are stored as shadow copies on the original volumes and can
be restored, if they are still there, from these shadow copies. So in that
sense you can restore some individual files/folders backed up with Complete
PC Backup, but there is limited control over this issue.

There is a way to recover individual files/folders from the backup created
by Complete PC Backup using VHDmount. I have not worked with that.

You can have several generations of complete images made by Complete PC
Backup by creating those backups in different locations or on different
media.

Also, Complete PC Backups to a hard drive are not compressed, though backups
to DVD are.

I don't know if and, if so, what changes might be coming to the backup
features in SP1.
 
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