Posted 10/30/2009 at 12:25:02pm

I have not tried this myself (yet).
  Here is one option to do an upgrade from Vista Home Prem. to Win7 Pro I found out today:
http://zeroization.com/2009/10/29/in-place-upgrade-from-vista-home-premium-to-windows-7-professional/

It does involve a double installation of Win7, but if it works, it will preserve all those settings, etc.  

Be sure to make an image backup before you start in case anything goes wrong.
I am not sure you really have to do that version switcher thing mentioned.