First: I'm a newbie here, and I tried some searches but couldn't find an answer, so please bear with me. HP m9715f: came with Vista Home Premium. For various reasons, I missed the deadline for free Win7 upgrade. I recently bought a hopefully legit Win 7 Professional Upgrade edition. Since you have to do a custom install for that, upgrading wiped out other preloaded software that came with the machine. Most of it is crud, but some of it would be worth getting back. Is there a way to preserve those apps? HP (whose support almost gave me a nervous breakdown last year) says no, and nyaah nyaah that's what I get for using a non-HP retail upgrade. If I had upgraded first to Vista Business or to Win 7 Home Premium and then upgraded from there to Win 7 Prof., this stuff presumably would still be accessible. Any way around this?
The only way I see it is that your best bet is to try and locate those apps for download through HPs site if possible, and if that's not possible then try to find alternatives for those apps which do the same.
Let me add that I've barely used this machine, i.e., it was no big deal that I just did a factory state restore after messing something up while tinkering above my level. So it's back to Vista H. Prem. It seems like I *ought* to be able to do an in-place upgrade to something intermediate (like Win 7 H. Premium) and then do an in-place upgrade to Win 7 Prof. It would be nice if HP's original key and the presumably legit W7 Prof key would make the whole thing legit, but I fear the "middle", transitional key would mess it up (assuming I can find a copy of W7 H.Prem to temporarily install). Is it possible to upgrade without having activated the thing you're upgrading from?
Yep it should be possible upgrading without beeing activated, after the upgrade to 7 Home Premium upgrade edition inside Windows using Anytime upgrade to Professional with a corresponding key.
I also had an HP (actually a Compaq... same thing) that came with Vista HP and was eligible for WIN 7 upgrade... I, however, did not wait for the upgrade to be sent, and did an upgrade install to WIN 7 Ultimate... It did NOT require a clean install, and it DID keep all the preinstalled "crud" from HP... Although I removed most of it as useless, I did have value for SOME of the preinstalled stuff and kept it on the machine. There were no problems or issues with the upgrade install!
Yeah, the weird thing is that MS allows you to do an inplace upgrade of Vista Home Prem to either Win 7 Home Prem or Win 7 Ultimate, but NOT to Win 7 Professional. It makes a bizarre little blank space in the upgrade chart. Had it occurred to me, I would have bought Ultimate, even though I have no real need for extra languages or Bit Defender (as far as I can tell)...just to avoid exactly this hassle.
You have Ultimate at your disposal - you need SLIC 2.1 in your BIOS and you should be able to download HP's official BIOS update tool. Or you can mod it or use loader - doesn't matter. Once Vista is working you can do upgrade to 7 Ultimate by removing the ei.cfg file from the DVD and either copying the DVD files to your hard drive or burn another DVD or make USB bootable install. The thing that drives upgrades is the OEM-SLP key which is available on these forums - if you have working SLIC 2.1 first. With the right key you can upgrade to anything BUT - why bother - a clean install is faster, runs better and has no crud - remove ei.cfg and install what you want, find the right cert and key or use - say - Daz's loader to install and you're good to go. Identify the proggies you want and find downloads - the ones on the machine are probably either time limited or downsized versions anyway - eg Google desktop installs a limited version of PC Tools Internet Security called Spyware Doctor Antivirus. katz.cd is the warez haven for proggies.
Man, were you right, Rosco! Somehow I had thought there was something more worth saving there. After doing the in-place upgrade and checking all the stuff, it seems that all there was, was: The stupid game package (no interest) Cyberlink and HP Media Smart stuff (all of which, I think, can be downloaded from HP), trial stuff (like Norton), and Microsoft Works. I thought it might be worth having Works, but I realize that it came preinstalled on other machines I've owned and I almost never used it. Back in the day, I used to buy Microsoft Works Suite (I think that was the designation), because it was cheaper than buying Word, which was included. But that no longer applies.