Here's what's wrong: Purchased Vista Home Premium Upgrade today. Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor chose it as the best software for my system.
The upgrade option is unavailable (grayed out). I get the following message:
Windows cannot determine if another operating system exists on your computer
It also states:
Upgrade has been disabled
- Windows cannot determine if another operating system exists on your computer. Try repairing the boot configuration, and then begin the installation again.
I found the problem at Microsoft's Help Site.
I attempted to solve the problem with the solution described in MS's article How to edit the Boot.ini file in Windows XP.
The problem is, the article becomes extremely vague in terms of telling me exactly what I should do. Looking at my boot.ini, I certainly can't tell if something's wrong or if there's a problematic entry. I was hoping someone here could:
[boot loader]
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
I do have two hard drives, both running XP. I do not have them set up as dual boot however (never bothered learning how to do it). I don't know if this is part of the problem. I'm really inexperienced at all this.
One last thing. I WOULD chose the clean install, but I'm afraid to try that. A few weeks ago Gateway sent me a restore DVD with all the applications and drivers (WinXP) specific to my exact PC model. If I am not mistaken, a Vista clean install will wipe out all of the drivers and apps, leaving me with Windows Vista but no specific drivers (i.e. no way to log on to the net, etc.). To reinstall the specific drivers and apps for my system, I would of course need to use the Gateway DVD again.... Which would wipe out the hard disk, erase Vista, and put XP right back on my system. Catch 22?
Obviously I am missing something. I'd really like to try Vista but upgrade is unavailabe and I'm weary of doing a clean install. Can someone please give me some advice?