Windows 7 upgrading

[Nobahar]

So, with the professional keys I got from MSDN (by the way they killed that deal). I have been playing around with it. The ability to upgrade without a clean install (i.e. retain your programs) is extraordinarily limited at this point.

I thought 32 to 32-bit upgrades would be pain-free, with 32 to 64-bit requiring the backup and format naturally. However, I got an error trying to upgrade Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit to Windows 7 Professional 32-bit on my laptop due to the version difference between Home Premium and Professional. It looks like I will have to format that as well (backing up files is not a problem, but I have to get most of my applications from my school so I'd have to give up my laptop for a day or two to get it done sadly).

On a side note though, outside of the upgrading process. I do enjoy the upgrades to features in Windows 7's interface and the new windows media player is considerably faster playing my library than the previous versions. I think the difference in gaming performance is mostly attributable to the extra gigabyte of ram I am allowed to use with 64-bit than the OS really being superior to Vista. It still uses a lot of memory idling.

The best part of Windows 7 was the fact that it recognized all of my drivers without me needing to download anything from any manufacturer specifically. On first boot, internet/router, sound, video, USB ports, everything pretty much was installed within the same time frame as the regular Windows installation. I did go ahead and get the latest video card drivers, but that was about it.

[Velo:Sity]

Here's an official chart showing which options you have if you want to keep your programs & settings:

[Nobahar]

It's ridiculous, I think in-place upgrade should work on any 32 to 32 platform and 64 to 64.

[Velo:Sity]

Then that wouldn't be Microsoft. They have to push Ultimate somehow, don't they?

[bubba]

The best way is to do a clean install. Yeah its a pain and takes a lot to do, but in the long run things run much smoother.

[DaddyRabbit]

I upgraded in place my Vista Ultimate 64 to 7 Ultimate 64 with no problem. To be honest I liked Vista for the most part but when I did the Win7 pre-order I ordered Pro vs. Ultimate. While I won't be able to do an in place upgrade I still have that "bad taste" from the Vista Ultimate "experience" and Win7 Ultimate has noting to entice me to pay a premium (the pre-oder was a decent deal though and I am probably going to get the family pack of Home Premium for the rest of my systems.

[NAiLs]

I have obtained my copy of 7 Professional today, and plan on installing it a bit later. I'm gonna avoid the upgrade pains and just reformat one of my hard drives and be done with it. What was this crap about taking ~21 hours to upgrade to 7 if you have 500GB of data on a drive?

[Nobahar]

Yeah a clean install runs you 30-40 minutes tops.

[MrBen]

If you actually upgraded from Vista, wouldn't it be buggy as heck ?
It's a pain to reinstall everything, but I'm almost sure all my programs will somehow be unstable and corrupt if I did upgrade.

[DaddyRabbit]

If you actually upgraded from Vista, wouldn't it be buggy as heck ?
It's a pain to reinstall everything, but I'm almost sure all my programs will somehow be unstable and corrupt if I did upgrade.

Maybe Yes, maybe No (the problem is with the maybes )

I'll preface my next statement with "YMMV". My Ultimate 64 to Ultimate 64 upgrade went better than I expected with no issues that a small bit of tweaking didn't fix (actually most of my Vista drivers worked fine).

That said, I consider this to be a test system (with a backup image). When my pre-ordered Win7 arrives, well let's just say I've already backed up all of my Steam games and data and all of my installation media is stacked up . It will be a clean install for me.