The upgrade option is not available when you try to upgrade a computer to Windows Vista, and you receive the following error message: "To upgrade to Windows, the hard disk partition must be formatted as NTFS"

When you try to upgrade a computer to Windows Vista, the upgrade option is not available. You may receive a message that resembles the following:

To resolve this problem, follow these steps to convert the hard disk partition from the FAT32 file system to the NTFS file system.

1. Click Start, click Run, type cmd in the Open box, and then click OK.
2. At the command prompt, type the following command:
   convert drive_letter:/FS:NTFS
   In this command, drive_letter is the drive letter for the hard disk partition that you are trying to convert. This hard disk partition is the partition where you want to install Windows Vista.
   
   For example, if you want to convert drive C so that you can install Vista, type the following command at the command prompt, and then press ENTER:
   convert C:/FS:NTFS
   Note When you press ENTER, you may receive a message that resembles the following:
   Convert cannot gain exclusive access to the drive_letter:, so it cannot convert it now. Would you like to schedule it to be converted the next time the system restarts (Y/N)?
   If you receive this message, click Yes in the error message, and then restart the computer. The partition will be converted when the computer restarts.
3. When the conversion is complete, try to upgrade the computer to Windows Vista again.

For more information about this issue and about how to convert a hard disk partition from the FAT32 file system to the NTFS file system, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: