If you are ever in a situation where you want to upgrade say from Vista Enterprise edition to Win 7 Ultimate edition - by default you cannot do this. When you insert your Win7 disc you won’t find the upgrade option available and the only way you see forward is to do a complete fresh install (after backing up your data of course). However, that is very time consuming and of course generally a lot of pain.

So here is a tip to get you to upgrade without doing a complete fresh install where you “fool” the installer in thinking you have a different version to allow you to upgrade.

You need to do the following steps, before inserting the Windows DVD

  1. Go to, Start, Run: and type: regedit.exe
  2. Go to HKEY\_LOCAL\_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion
  3. Change the key: ProductName from “Windows 7  Enterprise” to “Windows 7 Business” or to “Windows 7 Ultimate”
  4. Change the key: EditionID from “Enterprise” to “Business” or to “Ultimate”
  5. Do not restart!
  6. Now insert Windows DVD and start upgrading (the option Upgrade will not be graded out anymore)

Of course you will need the appropriate licences and still need to activate, etc.