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#241
OK, I've spent several interesting and educational hours going through all the threads I could find on upgrading - and it was time well spent thanks to several very helpful people.
I found most of the answers I needed.
Some still remain, however...
I have an HP machine running 64 bit Vista Home Premium. Got it last June, including the upgrade to Win 7 - which just arrived.
I have done a full backup of the HDD.
From the thread, I gather I have 2 options:
1: Do a true upgrade over the Vista, it will save the old OS in a folder & will register all of my many apps and run them with no problems (assuming compatibility, which has been verified).
2: Get a new HDD (1 TB or bigger), install that in my PC and do a clean install to that blank disk. So far so good - and I gather that when it detects the existing Vista it should have no problems.
Since my current HDD is 2/3 full, I like option 2 - but that would mean having to then copy all the files over with EasyTransfer...and that only copies data files, not exe (app) files, right? I assume then I would need to re-install all of the apps (most of which I have the installers handy, but not all)...which seems like a lot of work.
So, I guess the long winded question is - is there a better way, one that will move ALL the files (data AND apps) to the new disk, and set up the registry to make my life a lot easier than re-installing everything?
Or would I just be better off installing per option 1, and hope there are no problems?
One other quick question -> Soon after I got the PC, it somehow got infected by maleware & spyware...after some really nasty work I think I got it all (Maleware bytes, SpyBot & Windows Defender don't see them...) - but my machine has never regained it's youthful vigor of 5 months ago, sometimes it slows down for minutes at a time...Will doing the option 1 get rid of any residual problems, or do I need to go option 2 to be sure? And is there some wondrous utility that I can use to find out exactly what apps I do have loaded?