Vista upgrade/downgrade - will it be licensed?

I bought a Sony Vaio laptop with Vista Business on it. In a fit of stupidity I paid for an upgrade to Ultimate. The upgrade took ages (several hours) and caused me a few problems (drivers not working in Ultimate). But I finally got there and had Ultimate installed and working.

I've since decided Vista is not for me. I replaced the original 120 GB disk with a 300 GB disk, used the recovery disks to recover Vista Business. I now use Solaris x86 99% of the time, and virtually never use Vista. However, I do want to keep Vista there, just in case I need it.

I can't really be bothered to go though the procedure to upgrade to Ultimate again - it took too long and gained me nothing really. I still have the key to perform the upgrade if I want.

So I'd rather stick with Vista Business. But is my Business version still licensed? Will I be able to get patches, or will it appear as an illegal OS, since it has been upgraded to Ultimate?

If necessary I will perform the upgrade to Ultimate, but if its not necessary I cant be bothered to waste several hours on the process.
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Relevant Pages

  • Re: RE
    ... What JW is saying is that if you purchased the 32 bit Ultimate upgrade ... have inside a DVD for the 64 bit Ultimate (I'm looking a the package on my ... If you obtained the Upgrade disk somewhere else, ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.installation_setup)
  • Re: Upgrade Home Prem. to Ultimate
    ... take the disk back to where you bought it. ... if you own an actual installation disk (with the purchase of your HP ... Ultimate Product Key to perform the installation. ... Ultimate 64 bit retail upgrade. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.installation_setup)
  • Will Vista upgrade work if disk repartitioned?
    ... I then "upgraded" Vista Business to Vista Ultimate using the Anytime Upgrade DVD supplied with the laptop. ... I've since restored the laptop back to factory defaults, which means the disk is now partitioned differently to when I purchased the upgrade. ...
    (comp.sys.laptops)
  • Re: Vista Home Premium UPGRADE to vista Ultimate
    ... Does anybody know If it's possible 2 upgrade and how much it cost's? ... I can't affort to buy a complete version of Ultimate so I hope that ... What does upgrading from Home Premium to Vista Business or Vista Ultimate do ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.installation_setup)
  • Re: Will Vista upgrade work if disk repartitioned?
    ... I then "upgraded" Vista Business to Vista Ultimate using the Anytime Upgrade DVD supplied with the laptop. ... I've since restored the laptop back to factory defaults, which means the disk is now partitioned differently to when I purchased the upgrade. ... In other words, if nothing has changed on the laptop *except* the disk partitioning, will the upgrade be OK, or will I be fighting $MS to get a new code or something? ...
    (comp.sys.laptops)