Online "Anytime upgrade" horror

  • Thread starter Thread starter Arthur Hoornweg
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Arthur Hoornweg

Hello all,

I've had my new notebook with Vista (a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526
with Vista home premium) for two weeks now.
Yesterday I noticed that some essential stuff is missing in Vista HP
(such as the security policy editor) which I really need to test my
NT services (I'm a developer). So I decided to give the
"online anytime upgrade" a go and upgrade to Vista Ultimate.

I acquired a Vista "Ultimate" upgrade licence online for a hefty 199
Euros, made a full Acronis Trueimage backup of both the system
and the license file on a network file server and started the upgrade
process.

Downloading the additional files took an hour over my 4 megabit DSL
connection. The automatic upgrade process itself, including the latest
updates from Microsoft, took another whopping 5 hours and involved
half a dozen reboots. At the end of the process, I properly registered
the operating system online.

The first thing I noticed when the notebook was finally up and running
was that the welcome tune sounded choppy. Also, the movement of
the mouse cursor wasn't smooth anymore. Attempts to play a video
dvd resulted in choppy sound and jerky video. Something was interfering
with the system. The task manager showed no abnormal CPU consumption.
I travel a lot so I like to be able to use the notebook for multimedia as
well, this situation clearly wasn't satisfactory for me.
I did some searching on Google but found no solution that worked for
me. An upgrade like this is a rather radical change to the system,
it's not just a matter of returning to the previous system restore point.

I decided to deinstall and reinstall the audio driver. The notebook then
bluescreened upon every reboot and did a core dump each time.

I then did a "last known good" reboot. Bluescreen.

I started Windows in safe mode and deleted the audio driver again.
After the next reboot Windows automatically re-installed the audio
driver and bluescreened again. Stubborn bugger.

I then tried to boot from a Vista DVD to do a repair installation, only
to find that it wouldn't detect my SATA controller. It needed drivers
and asked for a medium. I inserted the drivers CD that came with
the notebook but it contained only some setup.exes which weren't
really helpful. These guys from Fujitsu must assume that Windows
is already up and running when you install the SATA drivers....

I extracted the driver files from the executables (using Winrar, great
tool) on a separate computer, copied the driver files onto a USB stick
and tried my luck again. Bummer. They didn't even match my Sata
controller. I give up. I promise myself that the very next thing on
my shopping list is going to be a USB box for SATA drives.

The bootable Acronis Trueimage rescue cd is brilliant. It recognized
my SATA controller and network card immediately (phew!).
Restoration went smooth as silk. Surely it must be Linux-based...


But how the heck am I going to get that expensive upgrade installed
properly? I paid for it and I want it to work! I still have the upgrade
license file. It appears to be a XML file which contains a serial
number. Can I use this serial number to do a complete re-install
or repair installation from DVD? Any clues?











--
Arthur Hoornweg

(In order to reply per e-mail, please just remove the ".net"
from my e-mail address. Leave the rest of the address intact
including the "antispam" part. I had to take this measure to
counteract unsollicited mail.)

--
Arthur Hoornweg

(In order to reply per e-mail, please just remove the ".net"
from my e-mail address. Leave the rest of the address intact
including the "antispam" part. I had to take this measure to
counteract unsollicited mail.)
 
Before you install the anytime upgrade, make certain that you have the
latest drivers for your hardware, downloaded and saved, on CD's. These
drivers should come from the manufacturers web sites - not from Windows
Download.

Also make sure you have the SATA drivers available. These must be extracted,
individual files - not an executable program that will only run after Vista
has been installed.

When the O/S has been installed accept the default system drivers - if any
are available. Do not allow the O/S to search on line for new drivers.
Direct the driver install to the driver CD you created before you started
for the latest drivers.

If the O/S does not recognize the SATA drive natively you *will* have to
install the drivers as a separate step during the install process. You may
have to supply them a second time after the first reboot during install. I
do!

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)
 
Richard said:
Before you install the anytime upgrade, make certain that you have the
latest drivers for your hardware, downloaded and saved, on CD's. These
drivers should come from the manufacturers web sites - not from Windows
Download.
Click to expand...

....

Thanks for the tips. But now that I have Vista Home Premium restored again,
which came pre-installed on my notebook, I'd like to do a second attempt
to install Ultimate. Not online, but rather from DVD.
All I have is the downloaded license file "WindowsAnytimeUpgrade.slupkg-ms"
(which is basically an XML file) but I also happen to have a full Vista DVD
available from our company's Microsoft Action Pack. Inside the XML file
is a serial number which I assume I can use as the key.

Do you know if I can start the upgrade from this DVD? Or should I do
a clean Vista Ultimate install from DVD?

Is it possible *at all* to do a full clean Vista Ultimate installation from
DVD if you only have the Home Premium -> Ultimate upgrade key?
And will the registration system work at all? After all, I registered it
yesterday before I knew the installation was broken.













--
Arthur Hoornweg

(In order to reply per e-mail, please just remove the ".net"
from my e-mail address. Leave the rest of the address intact
including the "antispam" part. I had to take this measure to
counteract unsollicited mail.)
 
Sorry. I can't answer that question. I have no knowledge of your particular
install DVD.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)
 
Insert the Vista installation DVD and close it when it opens.
From within Vista HP, double-click the downloaded License file.
The installation will use the DVD to perform the entire upgrade. No product
key will be required.
You will probably need to perform a phone activation since you previously
installed this license.

NOTE:
This upgrade will not work unless Vista HP is currently activated.
 
Mark said:
Insert the Vista installation DVD and close it when it opens.
From within Vista HP, double-click the downloaded License file.
The installation will use the DVD to perform the entire upgrade. No product
key will be required.
You will probably need to perform a phone activation since you previously
installed this license.
Click to expand...


OK, I will try that. I was hoping I could do a "clean" repair install
from the
bootable media itself, doing a completely new driver installation, rather
than updating the system whilst it is running. Since it failed me once, I'm
afraid it could fail again since the only difference is that the files come
from the DVD rather than from the website.






--
Arthur Hoornweg

(In order to reply per e-mail, please just remove the ".net"
from my e-mail address. Leave the rest of the address intact
including the "antispam" part. I had to take this measure to
counteract unsollicited mail.)
 
Richard said:
Sorry. I can't answer that question. I have no knowledge of your
particular install DVD.
Click to expand...

It's just the full-featured original Vista DVD from MS. The license key
determines which version (Home, business, ultimate) one can install
and unlock.


--
Arthur Hoornweg

(In order to reply per e-mail, please just remove the ".net"
from my e-mail address. Leave the rest of the address intact
including the "antispam" part. I had to take this measure to
counteract unsollicited mail.)
 
Two catches:
1. It's an upgrade license. So the previous system must be in place.
2. It won't work unless the previous system is what you bought an upgrade
for and is activated.

I've tried doing the "clean" install method using the PID within the XML
file. Doesn't work.
You can "clean" install Vista HP from the DVD by methods posted everywhere,
but you will still have to install Vista HP a second time to put in the
license in place and activate and then install a third time to use the Vista
Ultimate upgrade license. (Very time consuming and not too "clean" by the
time you are done.)

My recommendation:
Once you get it installed and have all your trusted applications in place,
make a full backup!
Then, if you need to re-install, you just restore the backup. You only have
to "install" once, it takes 20 minutes vice the hours for the upgrade
install, all your applications are ready to use and Vista is
"pre-activated."
 
If it is the "official" retail DVD from M/S you can perform a clean install
(which I would recommend).

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)
 
Please note that a clean install does NOT equal a repair install.

As in Windows XP, if you have a severely hosed system a clean install is
warranted. A repair install, while it will install the correct operating
system code, will NOT compensate for the fact that you may have something
configured incorrectly or may have other software that is interfering with
the correct operation of the operating system. Your miss-configuration will
be carried over.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)
 
A friend was advised by a salesman to do the anytime upgrade no an Acer
laptop that came preloaded with Home Premium (which was plenty adequate) -
went through the looooong download (no Vista media came with the computer)
and never got to the point of shelling out $$ for a license key. Now a month
later she's locked out with the counterfeit version run around since the
original user key is ng thanks to anytime upgrade. Neither MS nor Acer has
given any way to at least get access to date files before doing a clean
re-install. There must be a way to at least get the user's data off?!?
 
Take out the hard drive and connect it as a slave in another computer.
You may have to Take Ownership, but you should get access to the data.
 
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