To Install Clean or Upgrade; That...Is the Questionq

[Rhirtix]

I'm in a dilemma! Should I do a Clean Install of W7 or an Upgrade Install?

Is one choice deemed better than the other?

Any words of wisdom would be most greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

 

[Brink]

Hello Rhirtix,

I have always preferred a clean install so as not to worry about any remnants from the previously installed OS causing any potential issues in the newly installed OS.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[Rhirtix]

Thank you very much!

Do you have any recommendations for a quick backup app?

+ rep for you

 

[Captain Zero]

Clean install over an upgrade, any day. While 'upgrade' does work well, chances are far greater that you will have a more stable OS doing a fresh install. As for a backup app, Norton Ghost has been proven to work under W7 - unofficially.

 

[Brink]

You're welcome Rhirtix. In addition to Captain Zero's suggestion, Macrium Reflect is a good free program for backups.

 

[happinessiseasy]

Even though I did have a problem or two (I'll explain below), I still think upgrade is fine, especially for the users who customize a lot of settings and don't want to re-install all their programs. The RC is really not fundamentally different than the Beta (at least not as much as Vista -> RC).

My only problem was that my profile got a little corrupted. It was giving me a Server Execution Failed error, but I couldn't fix it using the fix that's floating around the internet. I just had to create another profile, and copy my files to it and delete the old profile. STILL less trouble than reinstalling all my software.

If you're gonna back up anyway, I'd say give upgrade a shot. If it fails on you, or you have problems, just wipe it and clean install. It'll run unattended, so you can set it up and go to bed, like I did.

Plus, I'd like to hear more about other people's experiences trying Beta to RC upgrade, so I can decide whether it's worth it to clean install to GA when it comes out.

Edit: Just realized I'm making the assumption you have the Beta already. If not, it might still be worth a shot, but I'm guessing it'll be safer to clean install from Vista SP1.

 

[Night Hawk]

You're welcome Rhirtix. In addition to Captain Zero's suggestion, Macrium Reflect is a good free program for backups.

I'll be taking a close look at that one for the x86 RC! thanks for the heads up there. The 64bit backup here fit well just right on the prepared recovery partition. The 32bit being the secondary wanted the 64bit host added in as well climbing too far in size!

The free to try trial version of the full version with the download page can also found at http://www.macrium.com/download.asp

 

[DJAd]

Clean install everytime.

As for backups stick all your stuff on a USB hard drive then copy back over.

You can get apps to backup installed programs but I would just install everything again to avoid any issues.

 

[Night Hawk]

Generally I have everything automatically backed up already on a separate drive or at least another partition where I can even delete the primary to see replacement.
When first setting up the dual boot of the RCs here using the EasyBCD tool the 7 boot screen is automatically replaced by the Vista scroll bar splash screen since that was written originally for Vista.

The solution for the restoration of the 7 screen was simply performing an inplace upgrade repair install seeing almost everything left intact except for the ATI catalyst and tuner card. Having just been installed that went without a hitch. Otherwise a replacement install would have been the option.

Clean install 100% best while needing everything clean installed fresh. Upgrade with same can be a sticky for 7 as well as the one written some time back for Vista. Repair Install For Vista - Vista Forums

 

[Dwarf]

For me, it is a clean install every time. Documents and files can be backed up to a USB memory stick or external HDD or even optical media and restored from the same. Applications are generally best reinstalled since the installation routines generally write data to the registry and with some programs the order in which this is done is important. You can, of course, back up the applications as well, but you will need to manually enter the registry information, but this can lead to problems if you enter it incorrectly.

 

[Night Hawk]

Generally once any installation has been around for any period of time a nice fresh clean install solves quite a few problems right off the top. In some cases however where you can't invets the time seeing everything done fresh and are in immediate need of a working system(home business, school exams, going on vacation, whatever) the hour and a half performing the repair will suffice until you have the down time available to go through everything once again.

Frequent backups are always the key word in case any catastrohy like a drive failure or some other element like a virus where you end up nuking the drive anyways. But then that's where drive imaging softwares if not the drive image option seen in Windows helps when you have more then one partition/drive to work with.

(Believe me the 16gb usb flash drive won't bail this system out!)