Should I upgrade to Vista from within Paralles?

I have XP pro as my Guest OS. Sometime down the road I would like to try Vista. I current use XP to do any .Net development. My question is can I use the Vista Upgrade DVD to upgrade my XP pro to Vista. I was thinking that when I install XP pro, using the Wizard there is a question about your operating system either XP or Vista. I was going to select Vista, then install XP. Does anyone have any info if this would work?

Thanks

 

Make a backup copy of your vm folder to CD or DVD first. If it doesn't work you can easily get back to your original version quickly.

There may not be enough space on your Windows VM drive for the upgrade - it should tell you this. If that's the case then resize the drive. This may be enough of a hardware change that XP will complain about registering the product. Send MSFT a thank you card. Try the upgrade and take notes. If you do it in a window then OS X can be used to take screen shots of critical screens you can share with the rest of us.

If the whole thing blows up then send MSFT another thank you card and copy your vm archives from the CD and try again, or just create a new Vista vm. You can have both installed and running at the same time if you have Licenses for both products.

 

This won't work.

Vista requires ACPI support. Your install of Windows XP in Parallels does not have this support and there's no way to enable it that I can find. Therefore, Vista will not install as an upgrade. You must do a clean install inside a new VM but if you bought a Vista upgrade, that won't work either as the upgrade requires a current install of XP to install. Even having your current XP media won't work like it used to. Microsoft changed the upgrade rules to require a current, activated Windows install to upgrade.

 

I haven't tried it myself but Microsoft upgrades don't usually require you to have an installation in place. Having the disk is enough. At some point in the process of installing Vista, it'll ask you for the disk. If you put it in the DVD drive, that should be enough for the installer to continue.

Now keep in mind I haven't tried it at all so I don't know if it's possible for Parallels to capture both disks (Vista and XP) at install time in a new VM, but in theory, the idea is that you don't need an install of XP already in place in order to install Vista upgrade editions.

 

In Vista this is no longer the case. You must upgrade from within an existing installation of 2000 or XP.

Therefore, the question is: How are we supposed to install upgrade editions of Vista in Parallels? With no ACPI support, it looks like it's not possible as of now. I should be receiving a copy of Business Upgrade through Microsoft's Action Pack soon and I'm wondering how I'll get it running in Parallels.

 

For a Vista upgrade to work, you must have a working copy of Windows 2000 or XP installed and activated already. Verifying media no longer works. The thinking here is that too many people buy an upgrade and then use a friend's CD to verify with. So they actually don't own a copy of Windows already and are getting upgrade pricing without having an original license.

That being said, I haven't found a way to install a Vista upgrade into Parallels. I tried to upgrade an existing, working Windows XP VM but it doesn't have ACPI support, so the upgrade doesn't work. I tried to create a new Vista VM and install Windows XP into it, but that doesn't work either because XP will not install into a Vista VM - at least I couldn't get it to work.

So, I guess we're hosed without purchasing the full version of Vista. At least until the Parallels team comes up with a plan.

 

Windows enthusiast Paul Thurrott has published a possible, but yet-to-be-confirmed, workaround for Vista's new upgrade requirement. It's still not too pretty, but it allows you to install an upgrade copy of Vista without dealing with older versions of Windows.

Can anyone with upgrade copies of Vista confirm if this method works in Parallels and gets around the ACPI requirement?

 

So far so good. I am installing now at least. Awesome! Thanks for the tip! I'll post back and let everyone know if it works completely and lets me activate.

 

Ok. That allowed me to do a full clean install. I have installed the Parallel Tools and everything seems to be working fine. I have not tried to activate yet because I want to play around a little before I do as I might reinstall again. If someone else activates please post your outcome. Thanks again for the tip!!!

 

Just to confirm, following the clean install did you then perform step 6 of doing an in-place upgrade once Vista was already installed? (Which essentially means you install Vista twice, first as a clean install then as an upgrade. Apparently this tricks Vista into thinking you did an upgrade and allows your key to work for activation.)

 

No. When I go to activate I will try that though. Thanks!

 

Successful install

I installed today with a Business Upgrade disc. I did an upgrade of RC2. Worked perfectly. Moved the old install to windows.old and installed itself cleanly.

 

Vista Upgrade Failure

I downloaded Vista Ultimate Upgrade, so I have it as a file. Cannot boot from it. Set the boot sequence to CD/DVD drive first. Toasted the download onto a DVD, but cannot boot the XP Pro virtual machine from it. Any ideas on how to get it to boot from this source?

 

Ok I did this and it allowed me to activate. So everything is fine. I justed deleted the c:\windows.old folder when I was done to get back some hard drive space.

 

Excellent. Glad to know we now have a way to install upgrade copies of Vista in Parallels.

 

A newby question. How do I boot from a dvd within my XP VM?

Dan

 

The Vista upgrade DVD within an XP VM? That will not work because lack of ACPI support. You need to create a new Vista VM and install a clean copy of Vista and the upgrade that. Just read this thread and you will figure out what you need to do.

 

As I mentioned on another thread--but maybe someone here can help--I downloaded Vista Upgrade Ultimate from the website rather than purchasing the DVD. I get the ACPI message. I can't boot from the file. Is there a way to make a bootable DVD from these files, OR is there a way I can use the files to install to a new VM? If not I will have to try to "return" the download (it's called a Letter of Destruction) and order the DVD instead...

 

Thanks zBot, I misunderstood the thread that you were able to UPGRADE an XP install, but I see now that the ACPI issue prevents that. Is there a way you can back upo applications and data from the XP VM and then reinstall that to the Vista Vm, or will I need to reinstall all applications and data?

Dan

 

As I stated earlier in this thread... install one of the betas of Vista and then upgrade it.