In-place upgrade?

[ADG]

I am a strong advocate of clean installs. Having said that, I have too many programs that would require reinstallation, so I'm seriously considering an in-place upgrade from Vista Ultimate 32 to Windows 7 Ultimate 32. I was wondering if anyone here has done this upgrade and can provide some inupt regarding how it went and whether or not there are any ensuing problems.

I'd rather not turn this into a discussion on the pros & cons of upgrade vs clean install. Just interested in hearing from folks who have done the upgrade. Thanks much.

 

[Tews]

I have heard horror stories that the process took hours, that it imported garbage from vista ... in short, it didnt save any time....

 

[ADG]

Thanks for the promopt response Tews

Still hope to hear from those who have done it first hand

 

[ADG]

Polite bump

 

[sup3rsprt]

Just as there have been horror stories, there have been plenty of accounts that it works fine as well.

Personally I would do a clean install. But that's because I don't have issues with quickly reinstalling my favorite apps.

 

[warriorking]

I will be receiving myWindows 7 Ultimate today and will be doing a in place upgrade on my Vista Ultimate after work, both are 64Bit versions, I will give you a heads up tonight after It upgrades....

 

[zigzag3143]

Polite bump

ADG

Polite bump <g>

Im a clean install advocate, but my clients aren't. I have done >20 "upgrades" and have had only minor problems. usually it is a function of how bad the OS was before. If they were having problems before they continued to have them. If not not .

Ken

 

[Kari]

I've done a lot of in-place upgrades, belonging to that minority here of devoted upgraders who believe a well planned and done upgrade is OK.

I yesterday upgraded my wife's Vista to Seven, only problem being the time consumed: over six hours. This diagram shows estimated time needed for a Vista - Seven inplace upgrade:



With my wife's computer I had not a single problem, after installation everything worked as it should. This computer I'm writing now was upgraded in-place some months ago, Vista Ultimate to RC build 7100 without a single problem and in about one hour I start to upgrade this to Ultimate Retail using this trick.

Before you start, make a full backup of your system. Even I have only positive experiences, an installation can always go wrong. I also recommend in-place upgraders to check they have all the latest drivers before the installation, as well as to check BIOS is up to date.

You have not filled your system specs. Without knowing your hardware setup it is impossible to say where you might find problems. Anyway, upgrade is a good alternative if it is done right and well prepared.

Kari

 

[y0himba]

I upgraded from Vista Business 32 to the RC, Windows 7 Ultimate. It took about an hour, and I experienced no issues after other than there wasn't a Canon driver for my printer yet, although the Vista driver worked.

Honestly, I cannot see where these horror stories of taking hours and hours to upgrade are coming from. My machine is modest, Q6600 Quad core, 4 GB DDR 800, twin 500GB HDDs.

Either they are dinosaurs, haven't been updated, I have no idea why it took them so long. I have 13GB music, and at least 100GB family movies if not more, and it only too me an hour.

 

[ADG]

Thanks to everyone who has responded so far. And Warriorking - I look forward to your update

BTW, I run a well known support forum similar to this one so I'm technically proficient and will, of course create a couple of images of my system partition before doing ANYTHING. I came here for advice because you guys are more into Windows 7 than we are at this point and I wanted to hear from the experts. I very much appreciate the prompt and intelligent responses - nice first experience here

 

[warriorking]

Just upgraded from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Ultimate via my OEM disc, upgrade took about 1Hr 30 Minutes, no problems whatsoever during upgrade or on any programs other than Bit Defender having Firewall issues with 7, should have a fix soon from Bit defender...System running smooth and fast...all programs running trouble free.....

Specs: Windows 7 Ultimate 64Bit
i7Core 920 2.67
MSI X58Pro
12Gig OCZ DDR3
EVGA GTX295
Auzentech 7.1 Prelude
3-1TB Hds Seagate
2 Blu-Ray Burners LG
800Watt PS
24" Acer HDMI LCD

 

[ADG]

Thanks - and glad it went well for you

 

[ADG]

Just did the upgrade - took about 90 minutes and so far so good.

 

[john4sd]

Quick question for the experts - I really like Windows 7 now after using it for about 4 months.

I have Home Premium running 64-bit. I want to upgrade to Ultimate 64-bit. I have a fairly
new Toshiba L655 laptop that has served me well except for battery life.... and an occasional
hard disk warning about no boot media found..... generally I can reboot by forcing a power off,
waiting a little while and restarting start into Windows without any further warnings or errors.

I had the standard Toshiba / Best Buy bloatware that was "pre-loaded" into my laptop when I
bought it. I went to great pains to remove all of this bloatware (no more Best Buy app that was
buried deep inside the registry - almost like a root kit)....
I have had some occasional hard disk warnings or failures and the occasional reboot media failure
from the hard drive. These are rare however and right now I have run for several weeks without
any errors or warnings whatsoever.

My basic question concerns performance. I am sure that upgrading with a "clean" install will end
up "cleaner" by removing extraneous junk pointers, data files, and other trash that may have been
left from the original factory home premimum 64 install. My question comes down to performance -
is there a performance (hard disk or cpu) gain to be found by performing a "clean" install. I am
strongly tempted to go the "clean" install routine - but wanted some extra motivation from perhaps
a performance edge between an in-place upgrade (which I have lots of experience from the XP world) -
or doing a "clean" installation. I am of the minimalist philosophy and I surely won't be reinstalling the
Toshiba crapware and gobs of programs that they throw into start-up to "help you" either - no thanks.
My machine works just fine without that - and if I want the latest drivers - I will simply log into the
Toshiba site (or elsewhere) to get it. I do have all of the latest drivers. I do also partition my hard drive for performance by adding a D: for Temp files, an E: for most of my program installations, and an F: for my data type files. I also have setup properly the temp variables, cache forced to be fixed on the D: drive, etc. So I know of these tricks already and they still work well.

So what to the experts say? Does a "clean" install perform any faster (on average) than an upgrade
installation? I would think so because the OS doesn't have trash files in the way (at least in the OS partition) slowing down basic I/O operations. Any other thoughts on this topic? It would be interesting to see if anyone has ever done a good comparison test using benchmark software to compare a "clean" vs "in-place upgrade" of Win7 - and I'm interested in Ultimate 7.

BTW - I will be swapping out my hard disk for an SSD sometime after the Ultimate 7 upgrade.

Thanks in advance..........
R / - John

 

[theog]

Hi john4sd

I would Check the hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostic tools first.
Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.
HD Diagnostic

When you have your SSD, upgrade to Ultimate with a nice clean install.
Take a look at those Tutorial:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/149969-ssd-install-transfer-operating-system.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/70822-ssd-tweaks-optimizations-windows-7-a.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/113967-ssd-alignment.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/91339-ssd-hdd-optimize-windows-reinstallation.html

 

[john4sd]

Thanks for the good advice and the SSD links. I will read those over prior to upgrading.
R / - John

 

[theog]

You are welcome.