Windows 7: Vista Upgrade & Anytime Upgrade overview

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So far, in our Windows 7 Overview series, we have published the following:

Over the next few weeks we will be adding many more focus items on Windows 7 including Touch, Windows 7 networking and media enhancements. Stay tuned for the ultimate Windows 7 focus from Neowin.net. Here is an overview of Windows Vista to Windows 7 Beta upgrade.

What did I upgrade?
I upgraded my Macbook (previous generation) which had Windows Vista Ultimate (64bit), to Windows 7 Ultimate beta (64bit). Remember that there is only Windows 7 Ultimate available for download in this beta and Windows 7 Home Premium is released to select beta testers.

My Macbook specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 @ 2.4GHz
4GB RAM

Existing Applications:

Skype
Oovoo
VirtualBox
Twhirl
Microsoft Office 2007
Windows Live Essentials
Mozilla Firefox

Upgrade Process
The upgrade was smooth but it took nearly one hour to complete. Below are the screenshots for your pleasure

Windows 7 did complain that Skype and some of the Apple devices were not compatible during the upgrade:

And after the upgrade, here is my Windows 7 Desktop:

I had to reinstall Apple Bootcamp as Windows 7 was complaining about some driver issues. If you want Skype working in Windows 7, download their latest beta. Other than these two things, the upgrade process was very smooth without any problems. Most importantly, I did not lose any files and all applications (except for Skype) worked!

We also have a a screenshot gallery of the Anytime Upgrade from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate. Anytime Upgrade allows users who purchase equipment with Home Premium to Upgrade to the Ultimate SKU of Windows 7 and enjoy the upgraded features without having to re-install Windows 7. It's not clear which features will be Ultimate only as Microsoft has not confirmed this.

#1 +tunafish on 13 Jan 2009 - 11:54

Not bad, nice smooth upgrade process

#2 JamesWeb on 13 Jan 2009 - 12:45

I'm glad Anytime Upgrade is still there, with the public beta being Ultimate only I was worried they may have scrapped the idea of all versions coming on the same disc.

This makes me a little more hopeful that's not the case!

#3 este on 13 Jan 2009 - 13:52

I'm actually quite surprised to see that it worked so well. Very nice.

(2 replies) #4 Jugalator on 13 Jan 2009 - 14:16

Nice, so this is also a sign that W7 could work well enough on Macs once released?

#4.1 j2006 on 13 Jan 2009 - 17:39

Umm.. Vista also worked on Macs

But yes, I'm also glad the process is much more smoother and seamless

#4.2 Chaks on 13 Jan 2009 - 18:30

j2006 said,

As Vista drivers should work in Windows 7 without any problems, it becomes much easier now to install Windows 7 in Macs as they support Vista already

#5 DEMON on 13 Jan 2009 - 18:15

I upgraded my Vista media center to Win 7, and I was astonished at how well it did the upgrade. Typically upgrading when using beta builds is a big no no, but since I had 400gb of movies on a 500gb drive I couldn't really back them all up for a fresh install. The upgrade took FOREVER, but in the end every setting, program, and file I had transferred perfectly. Only thing I've noticed was that I had to reinstall some codecs so 7MC would recognize MKV videos. All previously recorded videos were also transferred fine, although I did have to redo the media center tv signal setup. I also thought my recording schedule hadn't transferred (which left me furious), but after 2hrs it all of a sudden showed up?

(2 replies) #6 jerzdawg on 13 Jan 2009 - 18:43

for some reason I could not get Win 7 to clean install, I did a format and installed Vista Ultimate last night and will try doing this upgrade...

#6.1 Shadrack on 13 Jan 2009 - 20:52

jerzdawg said,

As I posted in my Neowin Blog, the 64bit Windows 7 Beta clean install lagged tremendously on my computer. There were many times when I thought that my system had crashed because there was no visual feedback. If you really want to do a clean install, I recommend getting it started and letting it sit overnight to complete everything.

#6.2 jerzdawg on 13 Jan 2009 - 21:46

I couldnt even get that far x86 version, when choosing the HD to install to it stated that it could not create a valid partition... even after I selected "NEW"

#7 yert* on 13 Jan 2009 - 21:09

I upgraded from vista to windows 7 on my computer and everytime I go into the video settings in tf2 it freezes/crashes. On my hdd with a clean windows 7 install this doesn't happen. Very weird. The upgrade takes forever too.

#8 Adster01 on 13 Jan 2009 - 21:29

My upgrade from Vista Ultimate 32bit to Windows 7 32bit wasn't successful at all. Tried it twice, and it would hang after attempting to install devices. Mouse pointer was frozen on the screen and there was no disk activity at all.

Clean install worked ok. There must have been something in my Vista install causing the upgrade to fail.

#9 JonathanVP on 14 Jan 2009 - 00:04

I upgraded my Vista 32 bit SP1 on my dual core laptop to Windows 7 32 bit Beta 1 and it took like all night and most of the day!!! I had a ton of games and stuff on it with about 70 gig free but it didn't loose any of my data after the upgrade. The upgrade was very slow but now that I am running it, it appears to be fine.

#10 naap51stang on 14 Jan 2009 - 01:48

One of the most painless installs I've seen. I "needed" a bigger laptop HD, so that was the excuse for playing with
Win7. Dell E1505, 2gig ram, 320gig HD, ATI video. Install took less than 45 minutes, then all I had to do was install the SD card, sound card, video card drivers (sound & video worked with "generic" drivers).
Installed all the apps I use at work...photoshop, acrobat, couple of proprietary apps, remote desktop, VPN, Office.
EVERYTHING works flawlessly. The only thing I couldn't get to install (obviously), sandboxie, spybot & windowblinds.

(1 reply) #11 +shinji257 on 14 Jan 2009 - 03:52

Just so you guys know I timed a windows 7 install and it was 21 minutes from the time the cd finished loading (this is the main welcome -- before you click on install now) to the first logon. Pretty good time.

#11.1 +Smigit on 14 Jan 2009 - 10:00

Mine was basically 20 mins or so also

#12 +Steeley on 14 Jan 2009 - 07:58

I upgraded and it worked fine too. However, it took 4 or 5 hours!

#13 Erikas on 14 Jan 2009 - 08:45

I partitioned my drive to do a clean install as I was worried about the upgrade. Now reading all these comments I think I will give it a try on my laptop. Don't mind if it takes a long time, as long as the end result is successful. I must admit I am very pleased haveing checked out the clean install of Windows 7, but can't wait to use it with all my apps installed and use it day to day. Time to make a backup first though

Thank you for the review.

#14 Night Prowler on 17 Jan 2009 - 11:48

If your clean install took more then 30 minutes you have some problem somewhere. Took 3 hours on a clean install for me until I found I needed to select Remap Memory in my BIOS and the next clean install took 27 minutes on x64

#15 Pam14160 on 26 Jan 2009 - 00:48

Like a couple of you my install of 7 ultmate took only 21 minutes. Not sure as to the problem some of you are having with the lengthly install, but maybe on the 7 blog site you might find an answer.

There was one problem I had, and that was downloading the critial updates to MS office 2003 pro; it crashed the system which meant a reinstall, hence, I turned off the updates to office.

#16 Dartarius on 23 Feb 2009 - 22:25

I was actually wondering what happens if you upgrade your VISTA ULTIMATE copy to WIN 7 ULTIMATE BETA when it reaches the expiration date? If you already paid for vista, will they allow you to upgrade to the release canditates and finally to the RTM version once its released? OR will you have to reinstall everything all over again??

#17 Nexus- on 01 Mar 2009 - 04:17

WARNING: It will delete all vista ultimate extras as part of the upgrade process. If you want to save them make sure you back them up and restore them. The obvious one you can not backup and reinstall is dreamscene, but since thats coming for xp its expected stardock would also make it for 7 as well.

It also deletes the sticky note gadget on all skus so backup that up as well if your looking to keep it.

#18 here11 on 02 Apr 2009 - 01:30

I chose to install it instead of upgrade it. does this mean that my vista install is still active? it saved all my old stuff as windows.old.

how would i go about reformatting my computer either keeping it in windows 7, or reformatting it back to vista (i dont have the disk, though)

#19 Night Prowler on 28 Apr 2009 - 01:12

There are problems with Windows 7 not catching all the incompatabilities. There is something installed that is NOT allowing me to transfer LARGE files (25GB) after the upgrade to a USB device. Vista transfers fine. Prior to upgrading I removed Symantec Endpoint, CCC Codec pack, Quicktime, and VMWare. Looking in my logs after the upgrade I had some warnings and Errors. Seems to be 100% it's best to do a fresh install.

#20 TR2006LH on 11 May 2009 - 12:00

I installed Windows 7 RC in Virtual Machine (using VMWare) it took 15 mins

WOW!
And never hanged even once so RC is pretty Cool! then Beta

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Windows 7: Vista Upgrade & Anytime Upgrade overview

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