Newbie-Opinions on Clean v Custom Install

ChubbyTubby said:

Thanks, Greg. I'll do that check and use the tutorial from this site. I've already read it and it was easy to understand

Rich, I am going to do what you say about making an image of the HD before I start. I've got Macrium Reflect to do that. So, with the recovery disks, the image of the HD, I should be covered in case of a mistake. lol

Thanks to everyone for clearing up some stuff for me. This is my first time changing OS's and just over thinking things. Y'all have calmed my nerves. lol Thanks again.

I have to agree with the prior member, stay calm and just enjoy. I was looking forward to my preorder of 7 since July. Well the disc arrived on Monday, but I was over thinking and decided not to install it for a while. I am not too knowledgable in the computer field, but I learn things quickly. Let me suggest to you just what I did. I went to You Tube and actually watched step by step, so I would know exactly what to expect. I read comments in the forum and read the tutorials. Well, first thing on Tuesday, I had breakfast and began the installation (clean). No problems whatsoever. Just take your time be sure of what you are doing and enjoy.
Just a few unexpected inconveniences. I had to reinstall office 2007 excel and word) (make sure you have all your program DVD's, with the product key number). Well, I did not even think about it, but I was bombarded with updates. Then even though I checked the HP website to make sure they had the drivers for a printer, when I actually hit download, I got the message coming in Mid November. Bottom line, if I could do it and I am an old timer, you can do it. Just go slow step by step. Best of luck and enjoy.

With the image made beforehand, you can try the cleanest of all installs, booting from disk, choosing Custom>Advanced tools and deleting all partitions, creating one big new one, formatting and installing.

If you can pull needed apps/drivers off the second disk they provide by browsing, fine. If not you can get the staples Adobe flash/reader, Java runtime/possibly free reader, good anti-virus (Avast free home is lightest/best IMHO) from the web and might not need to run that disk since it will probably hold bloat.

At any point where you feel you need to start over, just reimage your HDD in 15 minutes.

Afterward be sure to make another image (Win7 Backup imaging is fine here) to save to an external so reinstalls will never be needed. I make a primary partition on my HDD to save a copy for easy detection if I need to boot Installer to recover from image, bit it's good to save externally in case of HDD failure.

Really appreciate all the help. Been very helpful.

I did go to youtube to watch actual installations, so along with the tutorial, I should be good to go.

Only one, hopefully last, question.

After I click on the custom install, for a totally clean install, I want to format my disk drive that I'm going to be putting Windows 7 on, right? One video I saw did that along with the tutortial, but another video didn't.

I click on the drive/partition(I only have one partition on my C drive), click delete, then click new(which will set up the system partition also-this was on one video where it automatically seemed to set up this partition) and then click on the unallocated partition and hit format....then continue on?

That is the way I understood it(and the tutorial shows) and just want to make sure. I'm scheduled to get my disk today so hopefully this weekend I'll be able to do this. :)

If I recall correctly, you never see a choice for "format", but formatting is automatically done in the background during the installation.

ChubbyTubby said:

After I click on the custom install, for a totally clean install, I want to format my disk drive that I'm going to be putting Windows 7 on, right? One video I saw did that along with the tutortial, but another video didn't.

I click on the drive/partition(I only have one partition on my C drive), click delete, then click new(which will set up the system partition also-this was on one video where it automatically seemed to set up this partition) and then click on the unallocated partition and hit format....then continue on?

That is the way I understood it(and the tutorial shows) and just want to make sure. I'm scheduled to get my disk today so hopefully this weekend I'll be able to do this. :)

Yes, you've got it right.

Later, you can go into Disk Management, shrink your one Win7 partition down to make new partition(s) as you wish.

For example, I make a Primary partition for Recovery Image, then have Windows Backup Imaging save an image there for easy detection if I need to reimage my drive. But it also needs backing up to an external in case of HDD failure.

Many like to make a data partition where they store their files separately from the OS.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Thought I would drop back by and let y'all know that everything went good. Got my update disk on Thursday and did the clean install yesterday. Everything seems to be fine. Had a little trouble getting my outpost firewall recognized by the windows security center at first but I think I didn't have the latest version of the firewall. Downloaded it and reinstalled it and now its recognized. Other than that, no problems to speak of. Thanks a bunch to everyone that helped me on this thread. I'm sure I will be checking this forum out for anything new. And if I have a problem with W7, this will be my first stop. Just an excellent job by everybody. I really, really appreciated it.