They are complicated because we want to take the easy/cheap way out, we
assume a big company like Microsoft is honorable and honest, and we don't
want to be bothered with actually thinking about the words we read and
understanding them and the consequences if things go wrong. We just want to
get it installed and be happy.
An upgrade is just that. The license requires you to have some previous
system installed, and it has to meet the requirements of the upgrade. Does
your upgrade license allow upgrading from your broken Vista to a new copy of
the same version of Vista? Maybe you have to reinstall WXP (or whatever you
upgraded from the first time) before you can try to do the upgrade again.
Of course that presents a problem if your WXP was an upgrade from W98, and
your W98 was an upgrade of W95 and your W95 was an upgrade of W3.1.
Upgrades can be a real pain if you abide by the license terms.
If Microsoft were an honorable company, it would tell you when it purposely
designs the software so that you can get around restrictions stated in the
license. For example, I think the WXP upgrade can be installed on a freshly
formatted hard drive if you just have the qualifying W98 CD inserted in a CD
drive (rather than installed on a hard drive) at the time it checks for
qualifying software. I've read that this does not work for Vista.
You might try this:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_upgrade_clean.asp
Even though Microsoft designed this into the upgrade CD, it is possible that
Microsoft could redesign its phone-home activation reverification process to
deactivate your software at some point in the future, since technically it
wouldn't meet your upgrade license requirements. Some one on this newsgroup
says Microsoft already has made this change, but I haven't heard
confirmation from an actual end-user.
Microsoft has the capaility to deactivate your legal Vista installation at
any time in the future. If someone else activates their system by phone,
using your key, then you will soon have to reactivate.
I hope this response helps you and doesn't turn this thread into a Frank &
Earnest flame-throwing, name-calling utopian-OS marathon.
-Paul Randall