Upgrade Windows Vista Home Premium to 7 Professional
I trust this piece of advice won't run afoul of the big MS given that Vista is dead, but I'll take this down if asked. I had a client with an older computer running Vista Home Premium. They wanted to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional, but after buying the license off of eBay, they realized that there was no way to upgrade without wiping the drive and reinstalling all of their software. Below are simple steps to edit the registry that allows users to directly upgrade without wiping and starting over:
1. Click on start button and type “regedit” into the search box at the bottom of the window. Then, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version
2. Change the key “EditionID” to “Business” (mine was “HomePremium”).
3. Change the “ProductName” to “Business” (mine was “Windows Vista (TM) Home Premium”, replace the entire entry with the word “Business”).
4. Reboot
That's it - you should now be able to upgrade from the Windows 7 Professional Upgrade DVD.