in-place upgrade vs. clean install

[Jonathan_King]

I have never done an in-place upgrade, so I am a little confused. One very knowledgeable friend told me that the in-place upgrade essentially runs a Windows Easy Transfer, does a clean install, and unpacks the transfer file, all automatically. Is it true? Is there a difference between doing an in-place upgrade and just using Easy Transfer?

 

[zeke009]

It's pretty simple, not very quick though.

I just installed Win7 Pro 64bit on my wifes machine which had Vista Pro 64bit. It took about 2 hours for the install to complete the upgrade.

On my machine a clean install of Win7 Ultimate 64bit took less than 20 minutes before I was prompted to create a user name.

Personally, I'm able to recover very quickly from a clean install and prefer to do this for myself. My wife has some things she did not want messed up and doing the Upgrade was the easiest way for me to get her setup. For some reason Acronis TrueImage could not see my machine to dump a disk image over the network.

As always, make an image or backup some data before you start.

 

[Jonathan_King]

Wait... So what's the answer?

 

[bobkn]

I have never done an in-place upgrade, so I am a little confused. One very knowledgeable friend told me that the in-place upgrade essentially runs a Windows Easy Transfer, does a clean install, and unpacks the transfer file, all automatically. Is it true? Is there a difference between doing an in-place upgrade and just using Easy Transfer?

I believe that Easy Transfer does not transfer installed applications. (It transfers program *settings*, but not installed programs.) An upgrade-in-place preserves applications.

Big difference.

 

[Jonathan_King]

OK, that's what I previously believed, but before I get back to my friend, I will do some further testing. Thanks for the reply.

 

[zeke009]

Wait... So what's the answer?

I have never done an in-place upgrade, so I am a little confused. One very knowledgeable friend told me that the in-place upgrade essentially runs a Windows Easy Transfer, does a clean install, and unpacks the transfer file, all automatically. Is it true? Is there a difference between doing an in-place upgrade and just using Easy Transfer?

I believe that Easy Transfer does not transfer installed applications. (It transfers program *settings*, but not installed programs.) An upgrade-in-place preserves applications.

Big difference.

Sorry I didn't clearly answer your question. Either way, run the Upgrade Advisor to be certain of what app will work and what won't.

 

[wallyinnc]

An upgrade preserves not only the applications but also junk you have in the registry file. When you go to the final versin of Win7 you will have to do a clean install. There are apparnlty ways around it but those are less advisable than upgrading from another commercial OS like Vista, since you also preserves any problems you might have with the RC (and maybe the RTM).

 

[Jonathan_King]

Thanks, all. BTW, I am already using 7 RTM.

 

[drevilwebmaster]

i have done 3 upgrades vista to win7, you need pretty much to upgrade from same to same, eg ultimate to ultimate.

The clean installs(formatting hard drive etc) seem to run alot better and our quicker by several hours over doing an upgrage of vista to win 7