W7 home premium to Pro/Ultimate

Encrypted Pigeon

Hey guys, im in a bit of a pickle at the moment, I currently have home premium on my machine at the moment but Im just after discovering some of its limitations especially with regard networking (change domain name).
I have two options both with advantages and disadvantages.

1. Upgrade anytime - €190 for ultimate €180 for pro, a one shot solution no messing around.
2. Download Pro or Ultimate through college for free (legit!) and dual boot it alongside home premium, this option although free is a bit messy for my liking seeing that I would be using it for one program only.

I just wanted to throw it out there and see if there are any other options that I may be overlooking.

Any info appreciated

Thanks

Fysh

If your college licence genuinely covers you for ongoing usage (ie you don't have to uninstall it at the end of your course), you could check if it allows use as an Anytime Upgrade licence. I've seen reports elsewhere (eg here) that suggest you can use a full licence Pro or Ultimate product key for an Anytime Upgrade.

Overheal

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Windows-Anytime-Upgrade-Professional/dp/B002M78BPU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327682178&sr=8-1

Encrypted Pigeon

Fysh wrote: »

If your college licence genuinely covers you for ongoing usage (ie you don't have to uninstall it at the end of your course), you could check if it allows use as an Anytime Upgrade licence. I've seen reports elsewhere (eg here) that suggest you can use a full licence Pro or Ultimate product key for an Anytime Upgrade.

Thanks, its coming from dream spark so I not quite sure the type of license they offer with that, so must investigate that a bit more.

Overheal wrote: »

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Windows-Anytime-Upgrade-Professional/dp/B002M78BPU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327682178&sr=8-1

Thanks for the link, Good price , interesting reviews , got to love m$.

Fysh

Sintel wrote: »

Thanks for the link, Good price , interesting reviews , got to love m$.

I'm pretty sure one of the Win7 updates sorted out the HAV aspect of XP Mode - it's better if you've got a CPU that supports HAV, but it'll run without it.

That being said, I only know one person who's done an Anytime Upgrade and it took over an hour to complete, threw up an error message claiming to have failed, then after a second attempt, rebooted twice and eventually showed as complete.

Overheal

10 minutes is the officially advertised upgrade time.

Capt'n Midnight

Overheal wrote: »

10 minutes is the officially advertised upgrade time.

Showing my age here, but the mention of 10 minutes nearly had coffee allover the keyboard, not like the bad old days is it ?

I still love ye olde "How to install Windows XP in 5 hours or less"

Means a clean , no problems, windows upgrade now has similar downtime to a Linux upgrade.

Just a reminder , if changing versions of windows eg Vista --> 7 a clean install will take longer and you need all drivers on hand but should be more stable.


If changing license home-->pro / std-->enterprise-->datacentre etc. 99% of the files and reg settings will stay unchanged, you mainly get new files to support new features, and removal of restrictions on existing ones.


NB. while you can't join a domain with home you can still have file shares and run logon scripts.

Make sure the username and password match
you can use something like (cba looking it ip)

::connect to server - name should work , but IP is plan B
net use \\192.168.1.1\ipc$ /user:fred@domain.name

::map a logon drive and then run script
net use Z: \\192.168.1.1\netlogon /user:fred@domain.name
z:\logon.bat