Windows 7 - Upgrade/Clean Install
 

I pre-ordered a couple of upgrade DVDs over the summer, and I also purchased an OEM full DVD yesterday. The upgrade DVDs are for a couple of laptops, and the full OEM DVD will be for my next desktop build.

My Lenovo laptop does not have restore media, but I do have the key for the pre-installed Vista. While the upgrade route is obvious, I'm replacing the hard drive with an SSD.

Did anyone purchase the upgrade DVD for the intent of doing a clean installation on a fresh new drive?

It's been so long, i don't even know what i ordered anymore. I'll find out when i get it in the mail from newegg... lol

In the past, it has been difficult or impossible to upgrade a Microsoft OS with an Upgrade CD......................

I would check on ZDnet and similar sites to see if it is even possible.

Yea, I thought it was strange since e-tailers are selling retail and OEM full versions of the media. I won't get my upgrade media from Amazon until the first week of November. There has been mixed facts/opinions about doing clean install with upgrade media. One says you need to have an activated valid OS installed in order to do in-place and clean installations. That would be inconvenient for those wanting to upgrade the hard drive, but have a valid license from pre-installed OS (no recovery media).

Plus, I'm not sure when my HD 5850 will ever arrive haha. I can build the entire desktop system next week, but the video card is the hold up.

Let me know if you guys can avoid in-place upgrades. That'll give me some hope with this SSD (U330 hard drive is slow as molasses).

***Please read this post in full before attempting this and if you have any question ask before beginning. Also if you follow these steps all information on your primary hard drive (Disk 0) will be gone forever. If you have anything important please back it up before beginning these steps.***

I was actually going to make a thread about this to help those who want to do it, but this will work. :)
Since Vista you have been able to do clean installs of Windows OS (Vista or 7) with just an upgrade disk. Here are the simple steps:

~Insert Disc
~Reboot and boot from DVD (Note: Many bios are set to boot hard drive then CD/DVD so you may have to change the order, if you need help on this please let me know)
~Let Windows load
***From this point on I am going from memory, did my Windows 7 installs a few weeks ago and did not take any pictures.***
~Tell it to Format your hard drive, at this screen you can also merge partitions or create new one. I would assume most of you have a single hard drive system, but if you have more than one look for the primary/system hard drive. It is usually disk 0
~Next you will pick custom install *DO NOT PICK UPGRADE*
(The previous two steps might be in reverse order and if so please let me know so I can fix them)
~Let Windows install and then begin the setup options
~You will get to a screen that ask you to input your key *DO NOT INPUT YOUR KEY YET*
~Finish the install and let Windows do its restarts and such and finally load into Windows

**To activate your Windows you will go to control panel -> System, scroll down to where you see Temp key, there will be an option to input key and activate. Please make sure you are connected to the internet and let it run its activation. Also, if it does not work, please verify you typed your key properly.

At this point it should be good to go and you can being re-installing your programs and such. If for some reason this does not work (not work means inputting your key fails), which has never happen to me, you can launch the DVD again, and actually do the upgrade and let Windows install itself again. What will happen is you will end up with a Windows folder and a Windows(old) folder. You can then delete the Windows(old) folder.


****I do not take responsibility if you alter something you should not have in either the BIOS or Windows itself.****

***Please read this post in full before attempting this and if you have any question ask before beginning. Also if you follow these steps all information on your primary hard drive (Disk 0) will be gone forever. If you have anything important please back it up before beginning these steps.***

I was actually going to make a thread about this to help those who want to do it, but this will work. :)
Since Vista you have been able to do clean installs of Windows OS (Vista or 7) with just an upgrade disk. Here are the simple steps:

~Insert Disc
~Reboot and boot from DVD (Note: Many bios are set to boot hard drive then CD/DVD so you may have to change the order, if you need help on this please let me know)
~Let Windows load
***From this point on I am going from memory, did my Windows 7 installs a few weeks ago and did not take any pictures.***
~Tell it to Format your hard drive, at this screen you can also merge partitions or create new one. I would assume most of you have a single hard drive system, but if you have more than one look for the primary/system hard drive. It is usually disk 0
~Next you will pick custom install *DO NOT PICK UPGRADE*
(The previous two steps might be in reverse order and if so please let me know so I can fix them)
~Let Windows install and then begin the setup options
~You will get to a screen that ask you to input your key *DO NOT INPUT YOUR KEY YET*
~Finish the install and let Windows do its restarts and such and finally load into Windows

**To activate your Windows you will go to control panel -> System, scroll down to where you see Temp key, there will be an option to input key and activate. Please make sure you are connected to the internet and let it run its activation. Also, if it does not work, please verify you typed your key properly.

At this point it should be good to go and you can being re-installing your programs and such. If for some reason this does not work (not work means inputting your key fails), which has never happen to me, you can launch the DVD again, and actually do the upgrade and let Windows install itself again. What will happen is you will end up with a Windows folder and a Windows(old) folder. You can then delete the Windows(old) folder.


****I do not take responsibility if you alter something you should not have in either the BIOS or Windows itself.****

Also, I am on campus currently so I might not be able to reply instantly if there are questions.

I recommend full reinstall. I always do that with every computer, every OS. It's probably a smart thing to put it on usb flash drive first. It installs in 20 mins on slowest computers that way. I've got MSDN subscription so I have tested all betas, rcs and pre release.

If you are sporting around SSD and you're worried of loosing data then you're doing it all wrong :) Full install is the only way to make sure it works as intended.

That's good news. Nothing worse than an OS upgrade, especially with Windoze and the goddamn Registry bloat.

Not true :)

You can do a clean install with an upgrade. I believe xp requires this. I always format the HD before upgrading the os.

Definitely clean install, which is pretty straight forward. It's the upgrade media and attempting a clean install on a blank disk. I was afraid MS closed the loop hole and required users to do in-place upgrades with the Win7 upgrade media, but I wanted to confirm this was possible and that an existing OS wasn't required. It's a sticky situation when a laptop drive fails, and the upgrade media becomes useless.

So one should manually activate Windows with the supplied key from the upgrade media after installation, correct? :tup:

Thanks for the confirmation and report. I can't wait to ditch the U330 hard drive in favor of an SSD before installing Win7 with the upgrade media. I'll give it a shot in a couple of weeks. Feel free to report your results in this thread!

I am not getting into the deeper side of data recovery, for the basic user just tell them if you do this it is gone forever will force them to back up their needed data. Yes, there are ways to get the data back, but your average user has no clue how.

My two installs have been perfect so far, desktop found 90% of drivers without having to do any updates and the next 5% through windows. The rest I knew I had to get on my own but that went fine.

The netbook I had to do a USB install which of it all the longest part was copying the data from the DVD to the USB drive. The install on my netbook may have been slightly faster than my beefy desktop, but again most all drivers on first go around, most of the rest through windows update. A few things not working on the netbook but that is because of Asus not releasing the drivers until they official release their Windows 7 version of my netbook.

OK, just making sure that was understood lol

Yeah, I usually just say the basic things, that line is just my scare tactic to get people to back things up. I always run into people who have a hard drive crash with no back up and then cry when I am unable to recover the data (for less than 100 bucks).

Edit: Though for 50 bucks it all could have been avoided. /sigh

So I'm gonna throw my vote in for the upgrade if you have vista already installed route. I did it on my laptop and my desktop when the RC came out and it does take a long time to complete yes. However everything works flawlessly and its just as fast. I really hate having to reconfigure my computer. Its a massive PITA

Ah, here's another bit of info posted today that also answers my question in case in regards to upgrade media:
http://community.winsupersite.com/bl...he-answer.aspx

That gives me more hope with the two copies of upgrade media I pre-ordered a few months ago.

See, he is having to do a regedit, which I have never had to do when using any Upgrade media. Now I always use Ultimate or whatever is the top item so maybe that is why (Home editions might be different).

I'll try it your way first with Home Premium to see how it goes. Bah... gotta wait. I can't wait to get it done with the SSDs (Crucial for laptop and Intel for desktop HTPC).

Let me know when you realize that all it is, is vista with a big service pack and some new graphics. LOL sorry could not resist I played around with it today and that is all it is.

Did you know Macs don't get viruses?

:roflpuke2:

CNet will be calling you anytime now to do reviews, just wait by the phone.

Actually I was tempted to get XP SP3 for the laptop and HTPC rig.

Since I was dropping in an SSD and giving the laptop to my gf, I thought Win7 might work well for her.

As for the desktop, I've had growing pains with Vista 64 especially with my Auzentech X-Fi. They finally worked out the memory leak that would cause my system to halt while listening to music and watching videos (anything audio related minus gaming). Other than that, I'd like to justify having 8GB of system memory with (hopefully) less caching to the hard disk.

It's a step release, which Microsoft typically has more success with in terms of getting it right.

XP (v5.1) was a step release from Windows 2000 (v5.0), they added features without breaking too much.

Win7 (v6.1) is a step release from Vista (v6.0), again they have added features without breaking too much.

Although if they released it as version 6.1 it probably wouldn't sell as well, LOL.

I've been using the official release on my work machine and my home laptop for the last 45 days and overall I'm pretty happy. Both are running 64-bit versions. Work desktop is a dual quad-core with 10GB of RAM and page file disabled. Laptop is a core 2 duo with 3GB. Only complaint is that sometimes the laptop wont wake out of sleep mode, and hibernate takes forever compared to Vista. Both were clean installs, Business and Ultimate. Upgrade "works" but it brings along all the baggage, best to make a clean start if you can.

Makes sense... Win7, of course, has the Vista look and feel. However, something about it feels snappy. The experience was quite pleasing compared to Vista, but maybe that's because I was already used to Vista. If I had a choice, XP SP3 if it supported 64-bit extensions.

I finished the desktop build (minus HD 5850), grabbed a spare graphics card, installed Win7 OEM, and ran some initial tests. BSoD when installer loaded indicating "memory_management" STOP message, so first hunch was DDR3. I managed to get Win7 to install on the Intel SSD, and I quickly started running memory tests. After amost 2 hours of testing, at least one of the sticks are faulty. Just my luck... 1 of 4 DDR3 sticks.

Other than that, I have good initial impressions with the i5 750 and MSI uATX P55 board. The Scythe Ninja Mini is NOT so "mini." I need to shave 1-2mm to provide some clearance with my HTPC case (Origen S14v). I had to resort to a pull setup with the CPU fan. Speaking of which, the Gelid PWM 92mm fan is "buzzy" at full blast, so I set it to under 50% duty. The RaptorX is the only thing that's making noise... SSD in the future. Overall, this HTPC is so much more quiet than my last build.

I should get the Win7 upgrade media tomorrow for the Lenovo laptop and SSD installation this weekend. Let's see how that one goes...

Ya with a smaller footprint and less system resources taken up the computer has to work less with the OS and can focus more on the tasks that you give it.

I hope so I was one of the beta testers.

:roflpuke2:

You should look into solid-state storage!

Getting into beta tests is really hard. Oh, wait, release candidates have been out for ages, and anyone could get them...

Nothing personal, but its pretty obvious you don't have TECHNICAL knowledge about the subject matter when you're claiming its only "graphical enhancements" and a "big service pack".

One of the nice things about Win7 is that it no longer caches frequently-used apps on startup. That makes a HUGE difference on boot-up. Memory management has also been enhanced.

I'm prolly gonna do a motherboard replacement before I buy Win7. The idea of having just a shitload of RAM is too much to resist. :icon17:

Apple fans are in for some surprises on that front.

What program do you recommend to get files back that have been deleted, formatted, etc?

Before he answers that, I'll preface with this: getting files back is completely dependent on how long its been since you "deleted" the file. If its been a while, more than likely the file space where the file was existing was overwritten and wont be able to be recovered, barring some fancy schmancy expensive government equipment potentially. Same goes for formatting, but with formatting since you are destroying the original file system (UNLESS you did a "quick format"), you'd only be able to find chunks of your files if they are large. Smaller files would be pretty easy to find more than likely.

Think of your file system as a pointer to not only where files are, but where the rest of the file is. Most people don't realize that files aren't actually stored in one tidy spot on your hard drive - more often than not, they are scattered all over the thing in random open places called clusters (on windows machines). When you delete a file, its not actually deleted - the file system simply flags those clusters as being able to be overwritten with new data when it becomes available. This is why, during a criminal investigation, getting a hard drive intact without contaminating it is absolutely vital - overwriting the data the criminal tried to hide could be a case-breaker.

As far as SPECIFIC software, I dont know off hand other than some called EnCase, but an encase license tends to be very expensive. But if you have it, you can make it back easily, restoring data for people (hence why its very expensive...)

have you heard of a program called virtualLab data recovery?

Bobo is 100% correct, in terms of recovery it depends on many things:
~How was the file deleted? Format, Quick format, just deleted, etc.
~Time since lose of file?

The first thing you should look into for recovery is from the hard drive manufacture itself, Seagate, Western Digital, etc. have some free data recovery that are ok. Beyond that it all becomes a variable of price, how much you want to spend? I have not tested any in a while, office just does clean installs and everything triple backed up, home I have double back up setup so I never have a need for it.

I know I could link the video but not sure many of you want to watch it. Go to engdaget and search for the engadget show. There last show had a 30 minute interview with Steve Ballmer, he explained his view (and Microsofts view) on what they feel from XP/Vista/7. For those who do not want to watch it, Vista was meant to break things as it was, the same thing happened when they did Windows 2000 (not sure how many remember that), and XP was the holy grail that took 2000 to the next level. Vista was suppose to break things, but they hoped with giving companies (driver writers, software companies, etc.) the OS two years in advance it would ease the pain. Apparently these companies thought no one would want to switch to Vista and they were shocked with all those who wanted to.

No wonder Vista's release was buggy as hell lol.

XP WAS a pretty solid upgrade, though. It was light years better than 98...

the biggest problems with Vista had little to do with the actual product itself. It mainly was a problem with marketing especially with the whole Vista ready campaign and computers that weren't ever going to be Vista ready. Secondly Nvidia takes a huge chunk of the blame for faulty drivers. Anyone with an Nvidia card and vista has to remember at least once seeing BSODs. The marketing campaign wasn't that impressive either and was quickly overshadowed by the much better apple ads. MS tried to come back with the I'm a PC ads but it was too little too late. I frequent Anandtech and the consensus for the most part is Vista is a good little OS especially for the fact the it's 64bit support is far superior to XP's buggy 64bit support.

What MS got right with 7. (note I will agree that it isn't some mind blowing new OS here to be your OS messiah) . However it is more responsive and leaner. It installs quickly and without any hassle. All my hardware works out of the box and if it doesn't for the most part a driver is found downloaded and installed automatically. (note I did have trouble finding drivers for a scanner from a defunct company). 7's greatest strength came in making the Beta and then the RC public allowing word of mouth to be the marketing campaign. Because in the end its people like me that adopt the Beta the RC early and use it like it then recommend it to his friends and family.