Reinstall Vista upgrade over Vista... is it still possible.

If I want to do a clean install of Vista OVER AN UPGRADE OF VISTA what are the options using the same upgrade DVD.
If an inplace upgrade was performed two years ago over X.P. does the workaround of installing Vista without activating and getting updates, THEN reinstalling immediately again as an UPGRADE still work. It's all on the same PC, no changes apart from RAM increase.
What are the recommended options. Thanks... it's all for possible future use.

 

You should be able to do a clean installation using your upgrade discs (i.e., a format of the system partition followed by a re-installation of the OS) on top of an existing _Vista installation so long as the installer on the upgrade disc can find a valid product code in the existing system partition.

I'm not 100% sure on this because I've never done this sort of installation for _Vista; however, I have done it several times for XP, and my recollection from a similar discussion I had a while ago was that the same thing should hold true for _Vista.

 

If you are using an old upgrade disk, there's no reason it wouldn't work. I would skip the updates until after the second install though. I don't know if Microsoft removed the workaround for sp1 or sp2


So, install with upgrade disk, choose your version of Vista, do not enter a cd-key. Choose not to download updates. When complete, do the install a second time within Vista, and choose the upgrade option and this time do typ in the cd-key

 

Thanks for that... It is an old upgrade disc, from the free Acer upgrade offer.
If you format the partition wouldn't that get rid of any product code i.e. the existing Vista one. All very confusing.

 

If you are using a Windows Anytime Upgrade DVD, you can do a clean install using the ABR method (discussed in HP forum).

 

What does it matter? You have the cd-key? Maybe I do not understand what you are asking?

 

That's why you don't format it by yourself - you wait and have the _Vista installer do the formatting for you. That way, the installer first goes and looks for a valid pre-existing _Vista installation, and only gives you the option to do a format and clean install after it's located a valid product key. once it goes through that stage, it already "knows" that it's got a valid product key (which, I would assume, it keeps ahold of as it goes through the installation process), so subsequently losing the logical data on the hard drive through the formatting process is irrelevant - at that point, the installer no longer needs to look on the hard drive itself to find a valid product key.

 

Understand I think... thanks !
The original supplied OS was XP. I also got the "free" Acer Vista upgrade kit so installed Vista over a clean copy of XP as an upgrade two years ago.
Even MS say it has to be installed over a qualifying copy of XP etc. No one ever mentions Vista over Vista... unless it's that obvious that it would work... that's where the confusion comes in. Thanks again.