Post W7 Upgrade to-do's

eduede · 19 Oct 2009

Hi Folks,

First off, I just migrated over to W7 Forums from Vistax64 and am excited.

I'm currently running Vista Home Premium 64-Bit on a Pentium i7 with 6gigs of Ram and a pretty hardcore video card. Plus, the computer is only 4 months old and i am a pretty tidy user with very little on the drive.

SO: I've elected to upgrade instead of clean install. Now, I'm not looking for any responses explaining to me why I'm an idiot for upgrading instead of doing a clean install because I'm not. I am aware of the drawbacks and I'm ok with them, though they form the backdrop to my question in this post.

There have been a lot of posts about why you should go for a clean install. I hope this post about upgrading gets some intelligent attention, too.

Here's my question: what steps can I (and other upgrading users) take post-upgrade to minimize the "dust" from my (our) old vista OS? For example, a good registry cleaning seems like a good place to start. But what else?

Thanks!

Perrybucsdad · 19 Oct 2009

I think a good precaution before you upgrade would be first to uninstall any programs you never are hardly ever use. I would then thoroughly go through the registry & HDD to make sure any remnants are gone.

Another thing I would advise is to make sure you have all of your Product ID's just in case something goes wrong and after the upgrade you can not launch the product and you must reinstall. It would really stink to find out you can't locate your MS Office ID.

Another thing I would advise before the upgrade is to ensure you BACKUP all of your data. I would do this through the File and Transfer Settings Wizard, and/or backing up all my data files to an external HDD or DVD.

As far as after the upgrade, not sure. I guess I would do the reg clean that you mention, but I think a good cleaning would be prudent before the upgrade to prevent any issues. I would also visit all of the device manufactures websites and get the latest drivers (especially with regards to video and sound).

Good question though!

Jordus · 19 Oct 2009

a good backup would be best. A good defrag might save you some time and risk of data corruption during the upgrade process, but really isnt required. If you were using Vista then you likely had scheduled defrags turned on anyway.

ccatlett1984 · 19 Oct 2009

Also, unplug from the internet and uninstall your antivirus software. but first, make sure its compatible with win7. Then do the upgrade, and reinstall the antivirus before hooking back up to the net.

Perrybucsdad · 19 Oct 2009

I'm not sure I would unhook from the internet. At one point in the install process it pings the internet for updates, and it's best to get them then.

One other thing I forgot to mention. Make sure when you do your upgrade, you boot from the upgrade DVD. It's never a good idea to load from within windows. To many critters hiding in memory that can foul things up.

gregrocker · 19 Oct 2009

If you mean you bought the Upgrade disk, then by all means try the upgrade choice from Vista. But be aware you also later have the option to do a clean install from that same upgrade disk, either overwriting your Vista, or to another paritiion or HDD. It's there if you need it, so you might want to save an image of your Vista, athough it only needs to be installed and activated (nothing else) to launch a Custom install.