Vista Anytime Upgrade = anything but easy

by Duf Anything and Everything

Shortly before Christmas I decided I would take advantage of the “Anytime Upgrade” in Vista to upgrade the copy of Vista Business I was running to Vista Ultimate.  I envisioned that all I had to do was pay for the upgrade, download a few files to unlock the added features and boom, you’re done.    Well I quickly found out that wasn’t the case.

Yes you download a key that unlocks the software and also store it in your “digital locker” with Microsoft. However to perform the upgrade you need an Anytime Upgrade DVD which I did not have.  Microsoft will send you one for free but it takes 7-10 business days.  So although I was disappointed that I didn’t score instant gratification, I eagerly awaited my upgrade dvd to arrive. I waited and waited and waited.  Well two weeks had passed and I did not receive the dvd yet.  I contacted MSFT and asked where the hell my dvd was.  They didn’t know what happened but said they would send out another one right away.  Once again I wait and wait and wait.  The 10 day window passes and I still have not received the damn dvd.  I contact them again, this time even more irate.  Again they ship another dvd out, this time via next day air.  On Tuesday I came home to not one but TWO dvd’s waiting at my door.  Evidently the second one that was sent via regular mail finally found it’s way to me on the same day as the overnight one.  The first disc MSFT sent still is MIA.

So anyway last night I finally get to attempt the upgrade, a full month after I paid for it.  I already had Vista running, I figured upgrading to Ultimate would be a no brainer.  Well after 4 hours and four failed upgrade attempts I knew better.  The first time through it got to the very end of the upgrade and did it’s final restart.  Just before the big payoff the dreaded blue screen of death pops up and the computer reboots and automatically rolls back the upgrade, putting me back at square one.  Once it got done it told me that there was a problem with my audio driver and I needed to update it. This made no sense to me since I was already running Vista with this audio driver for the last 6 months or so, but whatever.  I track down the latest and greatest drivers for my audio chip, install it and give the upgrade another shot.

Again I get through to the end of the upgrade when instead of a blue screen I am presented with a simple error box that says “Windows could not configure one or more system components. To install
windows, restart computer and then restart the installation” WTF does that mean?  So you click ok and once again you are rolled back to the prior version of Vista whether you like it or not.  So then I thought that maybe it didn’t like my HDTV card so I pulled it and ran the upgrade again.  Once again I get to the very end and am greeted by the exact same message.  It wouldn’t be nearly as frustrating if the process didn’t take so damn long, literally it takes at least an hour each time I went through the process, maybe a little more.  Before bed I fired off another upgrade attempt and again this morning I came out to the exact same f’in message.

So as I was eating my breakfast this morning I was looking up the error and came across an interesting post describing the same situation as I was seeing.  They said that the fix for the problem is to turn off 3 Windows services before running the upgrade.  It makes little sense to me that the customer would need to do this to successfully upgrade their Vista version but what the hell, it’s worth a shot.  So before I left for work I made the changes and fired off another upgrade.  Hopefully when I get home tonight my system will be up and running Vista Ultimate.  If the fix works I will post more details here.  Only MSFT could make upgrading Vista to Vista so difficult.

I also got my used Directv receiver I bought on ebay yesterday.  The next time my existing receiver flakes out I am going to pull it and slap this one to see if it makes a difference.

I am finally trying to sell our old Sony laptop on ebay. Since I have the 3 Lenovo laptops sitting around there is no reason I need to keep the Sony in my computing stable.  I have some other things I need to get up on ebay as well.