For anyone considering a Windows Anytime Upgrade, like from Home Premium to Ultimate.
I did this exact upgrade myself. The upgrade took approximately 2 hours, and there were no warning messages. The promo for the upgrade says it will upgrade your OS but leave your files and settings intact. Not entirely true.
Once the upgrade was completed, my login screen came up. The first thing that I noticed was wrong was my "true" administrator account was not an option (I had previously made it active, and was an option with Home Premium). No problem, my personal log in was an administrator level access, so I clicked to log in, it accepted my password, then went to a screen which took several minutes saying "preparing desktop". When it was done, I got a message that my original profile was not available and that I had been given a default or temp profile. My entire desktop was missing.
Then one of my central tools for system protection took a dump. Windows Live OneCare. In particular, the firewall was non-functioning. It took numerous trouble shooting steps and some downloaded software from Microsoft to get Live OneCare working properly again. Ok, I had made a limited backup from before the upgrade (thank you know who), I went to restore the files from the backup, which it did. But my c:\users\name (where my backed up files went to) was not where my "new" profile was being stored. My new profile was being stored in c:\users\name.machine name. So I had to manually copy the files folder to folder from where the backup put everything to where my new profile was being stored.
Recovering my desktop was interesting. Many of the icons where copyable from the start menu, which had most of the programs intact. Others, I had to dig into the location of the program and make a shortcut to put on the desktop. A few programs did need to be reinstalled and there was a minor loss of data. One other thing, with my original Home Premium set up, when I clicked into one of my programs, it would run fine. With my new desktop, now many of my programs are complaining that they need administrator access. So I right clicked the shortcuts and under compatibility, selected run as administrator.
My system is now back around 85-90%. It required several hours to restore most of my operating desktop.
But I shouldn't have to do that. The anytime upgrade should have done what it was advertised to do. Upgrade your OS, leaving your settings alone.
If you are thinking about doing an anytime upgrade, consider what I had to do. 2+ hours for the upgrade itself. 3+ hours to make everything work properly again. Plus the price of the upgrade itself. Had I known I'd have to jump through all the hoops just to get some extra features, I probably wouldn't have done it. My Home Premium was stable and working fine. It was the interest in having all the bells and whistles that got me into trouble.
My .02
I did this exact upgrade myself. The upgrade took approximately 2 hours, and there were no warning messages. The promo for the upgrade says it will upgrade your OS but leave your files and settings intact. Not entirely true.
Once the upgrade was completed, my login screen came up. The first thing that I noticed was wrong was my "true" administrator account was not an option (I had previously made it active, and was an option with Home Premium). No problem, my personal log in was an administrator level access, so I clicked to log in, it accepted my password, then went to a screen which took several minutes saying "preparing desktop". When it was done, I got a message that my original profile was not available and that I had been given a default or temp profile. My entire desktop was missing.
Then one of my central tools for system protection took a dump. Windows Live OneCare. In particular, the firewall was non-functioning. It took numerous trouble shooting steps and some downloaded software from Microsoft to get Live OneCare working properly again. Ok, I had made a limited backup from before the upgrade (thank you know who), I went to restore the files from the backup, which it did. But my c:\users\name (where my backed up files went to) was not where my "new" profile was being stored. My new profile was being stored in c:\users\name.machine name. So I had to manually copy the files folder to folder from where the backup put everything to where my new profile was being stored.
Recovering my desktop was interesting. Many of the icons where copyable from the start menu, which had most of the programs intact. Others, I had to dig into the location of the program and make a shortcut to put on the desktop. A few programs did need to be reinstalled and there was a minor loss of data. One other thing, with my original Home Premium set up, when I clicked into one of my programs, it would run fine. With my new desktop, now many of my programs are complaining that they need administrator access. So I right clicked the shortcuts and under compatibility, selected run as administrator.
My system is now back around 85-90%. It required several hours to restore most of my operating desktop.
But I shouldn't have to do that. The anytime upgrade should have done what it was advertised to do. Upgrade your OS, leaving your settings alone.
If you are thinking about doing an anytime upgrade, consider what I had to do. 2+ hours for the upgrade itself. 3+ hours to make everything work properly again. Plus the price of the upgrade itself. Had I known I'd have to jump through all the hoops just to get some extra features, I probably wouldn't have done it. My Home Premium was stable and working fine. It was the interest in having all the bells and whistles that got me into trouble.
My .02
My Computer
System One
-
- CPU
- Intel Q6600 Quad Core 2.4 Ghz
- Motherboard
- Dell 0TP406
- Memory
- 4 X 1 GB DDR2 Kingston 800 Mhz
- Graphics card(s)
- Nvidia 8800 GT 512 MB
- Monitor(s) Displays
- Dual Dell 22" Widescreen
- Screen Resolution
- 3360x1050
- Hard Drives
- 320 GB Internal Main 500 GB USB External 160 GB USB External 2TB USB External
- Internet Speed
- DSL 3MB
