On Tue, 04 Jan 2011 09:13:23 -0600, "Pete C."
wrote:

This laptop originally came with Vista, but I put a Win7 upgrade on it
when I got my mother a new laptop that came with Win7 so I had a
matching machine to help with remote support. In the time since I got my
laptop I moved and remodeled, so the original Vista disks were long
lost. As this was my only Win7 machine all I had was the upgrade disk
set. The Win7 upgrade didn't want to install on a new HD, so I was a bit
stuck.

Have an XP disk?

"...XP users will now be able to upgrade to Windows 7, but will have
to do a clean install or custom install of Windows 7 instead."

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1818-upgrade-install-windows-7-a.html

"...Just to let you all know that I have confirmed that you can do
either a clean install, custom install, or upgrade install with a
retail Upgrade version of Windows 7 and activate it on a clean
unallocated (blank) drive or partition without any other OS installed
or with one installed. It does not matter.."

http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/30622-doing-clean-install-upgrade-windows-7-version.html

See more @ http://www.sevenforums.com/