My PC is currently running Windows XP Professional. I have a Windows Vista Home Premium upgrade DVD but am unable to boot from my DVD drive. Since I am not installing a clean copy of Vista, will I be able to complete the installation or will I be unable to, due to the fact that I can't boot from my DVD drive?

Boot in to XP and put the Vista disk in your drive.

When the "setup windows" message shows up, see if it will let you install.

I am pretty sure you cannot, but if your drive does not have a bootable CD/DVD drive then maybe it is not ready for Vista?

Just a thought.

Perhaps the issue with the drive can be fixed? Do you know why you cannot boot from it?

You need a working DVD/CD drive to load vista. There is no other legitimate way.

At first I thought it might of been the IDE cable but I came to the conclusion that the IDE connector on my motherboard is dead. So, I bought an IDE to USB adapter. The DVD drive is able to boot once Windows installs the neccesary driver but without an OS I can't boot from it.

I know if I boot and install a clean copy of Windows Vista that at some point during the installation the partition will be deleted, causing the computer to stop booting from the DVD drive, which would leave me with no OS. So, I was just wondering, since upgrading to Windows Vista doesn't involve deleting any partitions, if I'll be able to install Windows Vista successfully.

You are lucky you have Windows XP Professional... You will not be so happy with VISTA... so why do you want it?
You need to fix that computer, son, if you are going to leap into the VISTA World... Why not wait for Windows 7... by then, you should have it fixed.

If you can read the DVD in XP, you can copy its contents to hdd and run setup from there. If you have more than one partition you'll be able to install it "clean" without upgrading XP. It's not mandatory to delete partitions when installing.

OK, I just have a small question here. Are the HDDs of this machine IDE or SATA?

If they're IDE, why not slave the DVD drive on the same buss temporarily, until you get Vista installed.

If the HDDs are SATA, then you probably have a free SATA port, and you need to spring for a SATA DVD drive.

As others have mentioned, replacing XP Pro with Vista is, um, idiotic. Sorry, it was the first adjective that sprang to mind.

I have to agree. To be honest, I use Vista on my main computer, but it came with Vista installed and was designed for it. I then upgraded another computer to Vista that came with XP and it was extremely slow. Even if it says 'Windows Vista Capable'.....its not.

Windows 7 will blow Vista out of the water and convert most of the XP users still out there. I have been testing it since Beta and it really is an outstanding operating system.

Anyway, CD/DVD drives are cheap now, I suggest you get one if you want your computer to survive. Flash drives are the new method of portable storage, but the CD is not dead.

And, it should load faster too.

Windows 7 will Not for Sure blast a slow Windows VISTA machine out of the water... it too will be slow, but not as slow as the VISTA based upon our work with the two 7 betas

My testing of Windows 7 allowed me to install it on a Pentium III and still function normally. Vista can't do that. I am not arguing just stating how my experiences with the beta and RC compare to my Vista installation.