Install from Windows upgrade disc?

I've looked all over and can't find any reference to this. I have lots of Windows disks, from 98->XP->Win7, but most of them are upgrade disks. Installing in parallels gives me the "cannot find version to upgrade" errors, and when I eject the disk to insert the previous version, I can't get it to recognize the older version disc that I just installed. Is this process documented somewhere (I couldn't find it)??

Brett