Windows 7 Professional Upgrade

My current HP Pavilion dv6835nr laptop (bought in 2008) is running Windows Vista Home Premium and I bought the upgrade for Windows 7 Professional. I did the Windows compatibility and I can install the 32-bit Windows 7 (currently I'm running 32-bit Vista SP-2). My question is can I just upgrade or do I need to do a custom install? I've been researching it and haven't found anything specific on this topic. Thanks!

Should be able to do an upgrade, but I highly recommend doing a clean install instead. Windows 7 is a better OS without Vista's junk lying around.

Agreed...a clean install it the way to go. Just save what, if any thing to dvd's/cd's or thumb drives and then change boot order to cd/dvd, load disc and reboot and boot from cd, then format hdd and install new OS. Over simplified but basicly that's it.

It is my understanding you cannot upgrade from Vista Home Premium to W7 Professional without a clean (custom) install. The regular upgrade option is only available from the same version to the same version or to Ultimate. See HERE that custom installs are needed to change from Home Premium to Professional.

To do the clean install you want to download Windows Easy Transfer for Vista and use it to back up your user settings and data. You should also gather all your program disks as you will have to reinstall all your programs after the install.

Note that HP likely installed some software for you and you will need to download that from HP or find a replacement or do without. Most of what they loaded you probably never used or it expired after a x-mos test period but they usually have a few things you may want such as software to use the touchpad if the standard W7 drivers don't work, or to use extra keys on the keyboard, or an on screen volume indicator.

IMPORTANT: HP recalled a lot of the batteries in that notebook because of overheating. You might want to check out HERE to make sure your battery is safe. That is also where you should find most of the programs to download that HP installed for you but are NOT part of the OS.

You can upgrade from mismatched versions if you alter some keys in the registry before initiating the upgrade.

Could you share a link for that please?

Thank you all who have replied, I appreciate it!
Trainable Man: This was my understanding as well from what I got from Microsoft. I was asking here because it wasn't quite clear. I am working to do a clean install using the EasyTransfer from Microsoft. As soon as I get my data saved on my flash drive (I bought a 16GB flash drive for my data) I will begin the process, of upgrading I've also backed up my data/files to Carbonite.

Well as they mentioned a fresh custom install is supposed to be the cleanest and avoids the most problems going forward so if you are up to it then I agree it is a good idea.

But a custom install does require the reinstall of all your programs which an upgrade does not. Plus as I said I had read it wasn't possible to switch versions via upgrade so Thrax's mention of a registry tweak is the first I had heard of this. And I do love registry tweaks so I would like to at least read about it myself and it may be an alternative for you.

So hopefully Thrax can post back how that is done, even if you choose to do custom instead.

Step 3 in this article contains the registry entries that need to be changed, as well as what to set them to for Professional, Home Premium or Ultimate. Whatever you change them to, they must match the version of Windows 7 that you're upgrading to. The exception to this rule is if the version of 7 you're upgrading to is the ultimate edition.

Here is a comment from one user showing they went from Vista Ultimate to 7 Home Premium using this hack. In other words, it's proof that this method can work.

Thanks everyone for your help, I did the custom install and it's great! Now if I could get the windows office to install!