Hi all, Questions about doing the upgrade... Right now I'm running Windows 7 on a 64bit processor. Which would I buy, home or pro? Second, I'm confused about my current XP license. I've never bought XP on it's own, only with a purchased PC. I had a Sony Viao PC that came with XP. No Disk, just license and a recovery partition. That PC fried years ago, but I've used the License key to install XP on my current machine (with lot's of arguing with microsoft helpdesk). Now this PC runs the Windows 7 RC, so I have no PC that is running XP. So how do I handle the upgrade oppourtunity?

edacsac, This excellent article published by Ars Technica yesterday should answer any questions you have about the upgrade process. As long as you're able to get Windows XP up and running using your license key, you'll be able to use an upgrade edition of Windows 7. As for which SKU is right for you, this developer team blog lays it out in easily digestible detail.-Alex

derosnec, This Wikipedia page actually has a rather nice table laying it all out.-Alex

So that means any rebuild or reinstall in the future will require installing XP, then running the Windows 7 upgrade??

derosnec, gpedit is only available in Windows Vista Business and above, so I would not expect it to be present in any edition of Windows 7 below Professional.-Alex

edacsac,Not necessarily. To upgrade from Windows98 to Windows XP all you had to do was start the Windows XP install and put in the Windows 98 CD when asked for it.

I hope it turns out to be that easy dwolters. I suppose I could install XP on an old box as well.

edacsac,Doesn't look like it will be according to this article. Seems that the OS you are upgrading will have to be installed and verified Genuine.

edacsac,Not necessarily. To upgrade from Windows98 to Windows XP all you had to do was start the Windows XP install and put in the Windows 98 CD when asked for it. dwolters - True... But Vista's installer doesn't do that. You either start it from a running OS or not. Vista and 7's installer are fairly close to each other. The Vista/7 installer won't prompt you to insert the previous media to verify you've got the right to install it.That said, there IS a method for reinstalling Vista (and 7) without going through the additional hoop of installing XP prior to installing the upgrade. You can do a clean install. There IS, however, some question on how ethical or if there are any EULA violations - so I won't post the exact details or a link to the information - let's just say "Google (or Bing) is your friend..." It's a well known and documented "feature" that pretty much everyone out there's written about.