Vista - Vista Express Upgrade

I recently bought a PC and was eligible for a free upgrade to Vista Home Premium under the "Express Upgrade to Windows Vista" offer. I finally received my disks after months of waiting but have just found out that I only have the option to install the 32 bit Vista. I have a 64 bit PC and want to try 64 bit Vista.

Anyway, a friend told me that I can legally install 64 bit Vista with the same serial key. But since the upgrade disk I got only has the 32 bit software on it, I need to get the 64 bit installation disk from somewhere. He has an OEM disk of 64 bit Ultimate he got from ebay which comes with all versions of Vista on it.

So his suggestion is to use his OEM disk to install 64 bit Home Premium without entering a serial number and then enter the serial number and activate once its running under the 30 day trial.

Does anybody know if this works or if it's legal? It sounds dodgy to me but he's convince it works and is legal. I'm not interested in any non-legal methods of doing this, so I want to confirm this before I try it in case I invalidate my Vista!!

No replies?

If anybody cares, I received my Express Upgrade disks and went ahead and tried it and yes it works.

All I did was install a trial Vista Home Premium x64 using an OEM disk I borrowed from a friend. So I did not enter a serial number. Then while running trial x64 Home Premium I went to control panel, system and maintenance, then system. At the bottom it says "change product key". So I clicked that and changed my key to the one on the back of my Express Upgrade box.

This started the activation process which was successful.

So I'm now running x64 Home Premium with an Express Upgrade key!

Thanks for the confirmation, I was wondering if it would work myself.

Hi,
You can go to this link at Microsoft & order a copy of the 64-bit on DVD for just $9.99 (cost of shipping & handling). Just have your Product ID # handy from your 32-bit Vista version to enter for it. This is how I got mine, took only a few weeks to.

You can also clone a friends 64-bit DVD of the same Vista version as yours, so you'll have a copy handy. Just use your own Prod.Key # if you want it to Activate.

Shawn

http://http://www.microsoft.com/wind...a/default.mspx

That method doesn't work for 'Express Upgrade' versions of the software.

If you don't have a friend with the 64-bit version, the only option you have is to illegally obtain a 64-bit installation disk (i.e. torrent) and simply install first under trial and then change the key to your legal 'Express Upgrade' key.

in reply to the 1st post.

yea you can do this. (iv done it)

hope that helped.