I attempted to update my home development virtual machine running in VMWare workstation to Windows 7 this evening. I cloned it first – don’t want to get stuck with a no-upgrade path from Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 RTM when it comes out!

I ran across this unfortunate message:

Vista Enterprise cannot be upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate

This was not a pleasant discovery – figured I was dead in the water unless I upgraded needlessly to Ultimate. When I found out how to upgrade from Enterprise to Ultimate, I realized I can just avoid ultimate altogether and change from Enterprise to Business (sort of a side-grade), and from there to Windows 7 Ultimate.

Here’s the appropriate registry changes:

• Go to, Start, Run: and type: regedit.exe
• Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
• Change the key : ProductName from "Windows Vista ™ Enterprise” to “Windows Vista ™ Business”
• Change the key: EditionID from "Enterprise" to “Business”
• Do not restart (not sure what this will do, but the original instructions made sure to mention this!