Upgrade to Vista Business from Vista Home Basic

[cacruiser]

I have a new Toshiba laptop with Vista Home Basic pre-installed. I want to
upgrade to Vista Business. The system easily meets the min specs. Will I
have to track down drivers for this change or should Business have enough
included? I understand that at the least I will have to do a Clean Install.
Has anyone done this type of change?

 

[Mick Murphy]

Basic Home and Home Premium are not an upgrade path to Business.
You back up your data, delete the existing vista partition, format, and do a
compleate clean install

Before you do this, make sure that your laptop has at least 1Gig of RAM, and
128MBs of Graphics, and that is the bare minimum!

What are your system specs?
You don't get high-end hardware specs with Vista Basic.
--
Mick Murphy - Qld - Australia


"cacruiser" wrote:

> I have a new Toshiba laptop with Vista Home Basic pre-installed. I want to
> upgrade to Vista Business. The system easily meets the min specs. Will I
> have to track down drivers for this change or should Business have enough
> included? I understand that at the least I will have to do a Clean Install.
> Has anyone done this type of change?

 

[cacruiser]

Mike,

Your response is great. I was pretty sure that was what was needed. The
specs on the laptop are:Operating System C1 2
•
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic (32-bit version)
Processor and Chipset3
•
Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core processor T2330
o
1.60GHz, 1 MB L2, 533MHz FSB
•
Mobile Intel® GL960 Express Chipset
Memory4
•
Configured with 1024MB PC5300 DDR2 SDRAM (both memory slots may be
occupied). Maximum capacity 2048MB
Hard Disk Drive5
•
120GB (5400 RPM); Serial ATA hard disk drive
Fixed Optical Disk Drive6
•
DVD SuperMulti (+/-R double layer) drive supporting 11 formats
o
Maximum speed and compatibility: CD-ROM (24x), CD-R (24x), CD-RW (16x),
DVD-ROM (8x), DVD-R (Single Layer, (8x)), DVD-R (Double Layer, (4x)), DVD-RW
(6x), DVD+R (Single Layer, (8x)), DVD+R (Double Layer, (4x)), DVD+RW (8x),
DVD-RAM (5x)
Display7
•
15.4†diagonal widescreen TruBrite®TFT LCD display at 1280x800 native
resolution (WXGA)
o
Native support for 720p content
Graphics8
•
Mobile Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 with 128MB-251MB dynamically
allocated shared graphics memory
NOT a high-end machine, but I am going to add another Gig of RAM before I do
the clean install.

Do you know if there will be any SATA drive issues? The windows
compatibility chart shows that the hard drive "Will work with Vista". Which
it certainly does with Home Basic.

"Mick Murphy" wrote:

> Basic Home and Home Premium are not an upgrade path to Business.
> You back up your data, delete the existing vista partition, format, and do a
> compleate clean install
>
> Before you do this, make sure that your laptop has at least 1Gig of RAM, and
> 128MBs of Graphics, and that is the bare minimum!
>
> What are your system specs?
> You don't get high-end hardware specs with Vista Basic.
> --
> Mick Murphy - Qld - Australia
>
>
> "cacruiser" wrote:
>

> > I have a new Toshiba laptop with Vista Home Basic pre-installed. I want to
> > upgrade to Vista Business. The system easily meets the min specs. Will I
> > have to track down drivers for this change or should Business have enough
> > included? I understand that at the least I will have to do a Clean Install.
> > Has anyone done this type of change?

 

[Mick Murphy]

You have onboard(or shared) Graphics(not a seperate Graphics Card), which
means that if you allocate 128-256MBs to graphics, it comes out of your RAM,
that is out of the 1024MBs that you have now.

There is room on your MOBO to add another 1024Mbs RAM; so, for the above
reasons, definitely add it!

As you are installing you will be asked for SATA drivers; they should be on
your MOBO drivers disk, if you got one from Toshiba, or at toshiba site..
--
Mick Murphy - Qld - Australia


"cacruiser" wrote:

> Mike,
>
> Your response is great. I was pretty sure that was what was needed. The
> specs on the laptop are:Operating System C1 2
> •
> Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic (32-bit version)
> Processor and Chipset3
> •
> Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core processor T2330
> o
> 1.60GHz, 1 MB L2, 533MHz FSB
> •
> Mobile Intel® GL960 Express Chipset
> Memory4
> •
> Configured with 1024MB PC5300 DDR2 SDRAM (both memory slots may be
> occupied). Maximum capacity 2048MB
> Hard Disk Drive5
> •
> 120GB (5400 RPM); Serial ATA hard disk drive
> Fixed Optical Disk Drive6
> •
> DVD SuperMulti (+/-R double layer) drive supporting 11 formats
> o
> Maximum speed and compatibility: CD-ROM (24x), CD-R (24x), CD-RW (16x),
> DVD-ROM (8x), DVD-R (Single Layer, (8x)), DVD-R (Double Layer, (4x)), DVD-RW
> (6x), DVD+R (Single Layer, (8x)), DVD+R (Double Layer, (4x)), DVD+RW (8x),
> DVD-RAM (5x)
> Display7
> •
> 15.4†diagonal widescreen TruBrite®TFT LCD display at 1280x800 native
> resolution (WXGA)
> o
> Native support for 720p content
> Graphics8
> •
> Mobile Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 with 128MB-251MB dynamically
> allocated shared graphics memory
> NOT a high-end machine, but I am going to add another Gig of RAM before I do
> the clean install.
>
> Do you know if there will be any SATA drive issues? The windows
> compatibility chart shows that the hard drive "Will work with Vista". Which
> it certainly does with Home Basic.
>
> "Mick Murphy" wrote:
>

> > Basic Home and Home Premium are not an upgrade path to Business.
> > You back up your data, delete the existing vista partition, format, and do a
> > compleate clean install
> >
> > Before you do this, make sure that your laptop has at least 1Gig of RAM, and
> > 128MBs of Graphics, and that is the bare minimum!
> >
> > What are your system specs?
> > You don't get high-end hardware specs with Vista Basic.
> > --
> > Mick Murphy - Qld - Australia
> >
> >
> > "cacruiser" wrote:
> >

> > > I have a new Toshiba laptop with Vista Home Basic pre-installed. I want to
> > > upgrade to Vista Business. The system easily meets the min specs. Will I
> > > have to track down drivers for this change or should Business have enough
> > > included? I understand that at the least I will have to do a Clean Install.
> > > Has anyone done this type of change?

 

[silversolver]

Believe it or not, I actually figured out a way to do this without a clean install. It is possible, just not the obvious way. Microsoft wants to sell Ultimate Edition upgrades, so they made it so that practically the only easy upgrades were to ultimate. You have to fool around with your registry a little first to upgrade to Vista Business. If you don't, you'll run the installation, and the upgrade option will be disabled, even from within Windows.

NOTE THAT SERVICE PACK IS VERY IMPORTANT TO VISTA SETUP! Unlike XP, which didn't care whether you upgraded or downgraded with a repair installation, Vista requires that you install with the same Service Pack on the Disc as the installation being repaired ("upgraded") and will not allow you to do it otherwise. This can probably be gotten around with some registry fiddling, too, but I actually wouldn't recommend it unless you're a real glutton for punishment. Something will likely break if you try. The Service Packs can be uninstalled if need be, or you can use vLite to make a Vista install disc that has the proper Service Packs included.

Attached you'll find a .reg file I used to make this happen. It was ripped off of a Dell laptop with Vista Business SP1 on it, and the non-mini version includes the SP1 information. The "mini" version is the one I'd suggest you use, as I stripped out everything but the part that will change the information about the edition. However, USE THESE AT YOUR OWN RISK. If these files, which worked for me, mess something up for you, that's your problem.

Here's how to upgrade to Vista Business from Vista Home:

1. MAKE A SYSTEM RESTORE POINT. If something goes wrong, you don't want to be unable to undo your changes.

2. You apply the registry mod, and reboot. You won't see a visible change yet. The boot screen will still say home. However, if you look at the "System" page in the Control Panel, you'll see that the key has been changed, and you have "3 days left" before activation throws a fit. Don't bother trying, it won't activate. It's an OEM pre-activated key that only works on the machine it came from. Weirdly, even this page will likely still say "Home" edition. However.......

3. Now when you put the setup disc in, and run Setup from within Windows, Setup will be fooled into thinking that the current installation is Vista Business, and the "Upgrade" option will be available! And, I might also mention, assuming there's nothing wrong with your installation, if you click on "Upgrade," it upgrades! That allows you to keep your programs, documents, settings, and DRIVERS. It will take a few hours, but just let it go......if all goes well, you'll end up with a machine that is exactly as it was, but is now running Vista Business instead of Vista Home.

Please reply if this works for you. I presume most of the people who would try this have moved on to 7 by now, but if you get some use out of this info, please let me know! I spent a lot of time banging my head against the wall to figure this out. I hope it helps someone.