Upgrading to Vista Business

hah2110

New Member
Here is my setup: Dell XPS 13 with a 128gb SSD, Vista 64-bit Home Premium and an external 500gb hard drive. I have a Vista Business 64-bit CD from school (completely legitimate) and want to upgrade primarily because of the backup utilities in Vista. I want to be able create full images and store them on the external hard drive.

The issue: Apparently you can't "upgrade" from Vista Home Premium to Vista Business. I spent much time on the phone with Microsoft and they said it just can't be done. This leaves me with the only option of formatting and a clean install. I need to retain my data, file structure, settings and programs. After talking to a tech at Microsoft (who was surprisingly helpful), we collectively came to the conclusion that the easiest solution was the Windows Easy Transfer Wizard. We are thinking that I should [in theory] be able to create a full backup onto my external hard drive (which I just did), do a clean Vista install and then recover using that backup.

He thought this would be fine using my logic which was that if you can migrate all programs, settings and files from like an XP computer to Vista, or from one Vista computer to another... you should be able to go from Vista Home Premium to Vista Business, even though it is the same physical computer.

I want to verify with everyone that this is a feasible solution to my issue unless someone else has a better idea. I appreciate the advice.
 
I would recommend doing an upgrade from Home Premium to Windows 7, and bypass Business. You can do the upgrade without losing any files.
 
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