Upgrade without losing everything?

Hi all,

I've just bought my student copy of Windows 7 now and its coming up on time to install it. The question is this:

I have my OS on a seperate drive from everything else, so is there a way I can reformat and install the release copy of the OS onto the OS drive so that all of my other programs will still work (registry and appdata folder stuff intact I mean), without ending up with a seriously unstable OS because I've reintroduced registry entries and other faults from the old OS?

Please let me know if this is possible, and also if I've made my request clear enough.

Thanks,
Greg

This tutorial will help you and it explains things very clearly.

Upgrade Install with Windows 7

The only way to keep installed programs is to do an in-place upgrade from the Vista desktop. It is not as clean and stable as a clean install.

If there is ever a time to do a clean install, it is now with the best OS ever!

You are perfectly set up to boot from the Win7 installer, select Custom install and use Advanced Drive Tools to delete your current OS partition, create New partition there for your Win7 and then format. Or just format.

You didn't say if your files are on a separate HD or partition. If on a separate HD, I would temporarily unplug it, or at least make sure it isn't marked Active in Disk Management, as this can confuse the installer and place the MBR there.

If your files are on a separate partition, then you should really backup your files externally since installs always need backing up.

This time, save all of your program installers in the Downloads folder for the future, but if you save externally a Win7 Backup Image of the finished job, you will never have to reinstall again.

Sorry, I think I forgot to specify that I'm running Win 7 Build 7100 so there is no boot-time upgrade available... I will have to do a full wipe of my OS drive and a fresh install. The question is, is there a way to save / re-import the registry / app-data into the new install without losing everything or causing some craziness to happen.

There are two reasons for this... 1) I have registered programs which have made special entries into the registry that will not function without said entries and, while there are ways to repair them after the install, they involve reinstalling the software and re-registering online, something that will lose me a lot of time and also a lot of settings. And 2) It's taken me 7-8 months of fiddling to get everything running the way I want right now... if I have to start reinstalling everything and starting from scratch, I don't have any illusions that it will go any faster this time around...

You can try to use the Easy Transfer app included in the Win7 DVD. I personally avoid it because I do not want settings imported since it provides a corruption path negating benefits of a clean install.

There is a path to do an In-Place Upgrade from RC7100 but it is not recommended by MS. Because of your special situation you might want to try it since you could always just clean install if it doesn't work out right.

You need to scroll down to see the special instructions for in place upgrading RC. Several have reported back that this works fine: http://www.unawave.de/installation/d...n.html?lang=EN

Whichever you choose, it is especially important for you to make a Win7 Backup Image stored externally so you can reimage your RC quickly if you need to start over.

Thanks, I'll give those a try and see what happens... ultimately if things don't work out, I can do a full wipe / install.

Thanks again,
Greg