clean install upgrade

What is best? Should I do a clean install or just upgrade? What will give me the best performance? Thanks,
RYan

"Neversummer75" wrote in message

What is best? Should I do a clean install or just upgrade? What will give me the best performance? Thanks,
RYan

I would compare it to any other upgrade, whether going from Win98 to Win2000 or from Win2000 to WinXP.
You end up with a poor installation.
First, the installer tries to put the new OS into the file structure of the older OS, and second, there is a lot of old stuff that isn't used, but that isn't cleaned up either.
You get a much cleaner installation, if you create a new partition, and format it, or at least reformat an existing partition.
I havn't installed Vista yet, so I don't know if it gives you the option of creating or installing on a FAT32 partition. Probably not since FAT32 is not as secure as NTFS, but even if it does, don't do that either.
Even if it lets you format as FAT32, with the option of converting to NTFS later, don't do that, because it won't install as well on FAT32, and some of the problems don't go away when you convert to NTFS.

I recommend a clean install by booting from the DVD. If you go that route make sure you backup any important files you may need later.

What is best? Should I do a clean install or just upgrade? What will give me the best performance? Thanks,
RYan

Clean install is your best chance for stability
"Neversummer75" wrote in message

What is best? Should I do a clean install or just upgrade? What will give me the best performance? Thanks,
RYan

On Fri, 9 Jun 2006 08:58:02 -0700, Neversummer75 wrote:

What is best? Should I do a clean install or just upgrade? What will give me the best performance? Thanks,
RYan

Ryan I hope you are thinking of doing a clean install on a test PC or dual booting with XP. Vista is not ready to use as a full OS there is little hardware support beyond what MS include and a lot of 3rd party software may not work and there are several unfinished features only partially working.
I certainly would not upgrade unless you are upgrading a spare non critical XP machine.
I will not even dual boot Vista until the main release and will not use it as a main OS on a critical machine for at least 12 months after release.
Jonah

will vista do an upgrade from xpsp2 or is a clean install the only method.

You can upgrade from XP SP2 to Vista x86, no upgrades from XP SP2 to Vista x64. I would not recommend it though if its your production install of XP that you use on a daily basis. If you read most of the post here, a lot of the upgrades to Vista have been, well, lack luster. Do a clean install on a logical partition I say. -- -- Andre Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
"Duane Reynolds" wrote in message

will vista do an upgrade from xpsp2 or is a clean install the only method.

Duane Reynolds schrieb:

will vista do an upgrade from xpsp2 or is a clean install the only method.

Beware of an upgrade!

An understatement of Brittish proportion! Finally, a sense of humour!
"Andre Da Costa [Extended64]" wrote: If you read most of the post here, a lot of > the upgrades to Vista have been, well, lack luster.

I have backed up all the data on my Boot drive to a new I: drive and changed the boot order in the BIOS to be sure it would boot up okay, and it did. I then formateded the former C: drive and did a clean install of Vista, everything went fine except for a problem with my RAID controller, which I fixed with a driver update.
Vista does not recognize any of my old programs including Office 2007 beta.
My Question is should I restore the Vista C: drive with all the data from the new drive and then do an upgrade install, saving the new drive with all the old XP data, and then if I have a problem restore or replace the Boot drive?
Seems like there would be am eaiser way to do this that I am missing.
Thanks for any help here!!

A lot of persons are contemplating about upgrading their one and only, production install of XP. If you are itching to do that, DON'T! DO NOT upgrade your existing install of XP if you use it for work or you use it on a daily basis. Not because Vista is at BETA 2 means its ready for prime time or production environments, it is for testing and to get feedback on what's wrong with the product.
I also suspect some persons think Vista has been finalized, no its not, its still in development. I know Vista looks enticing and all, but it is still not ready for prime time and the numerous reports of unsuccessful, problematic clean installs, upgrades are proof of that.
If you want to try upgrade scenarios at least make sure you do it on a spare installation of XP, you have a back up image of your existing install or simply do a clean install on a separate drive or logical partition. For those who have already upgraded their installations of XP and want to return to XP, your only option is to format that drive and reinstall it. There is no way to uninstall Vista.
Also, there are no upgrade paths from Windows XP Professional x64 to Vista x86 or x64. You cannot launch Vista x64 setup in Windows XP x86 or you will get an "invalid Win32" error. You have to boot off the DVD. -- -- Andre Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
"Tom S." <Tom S.@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

I have backed up all the data on my Boot drive to a new I: drive and changed the boot order in the BIOS to be sure it would boot up okay, and it did. I then formateded the former C: drive and did a clean install of Vista, everything went fine except for a problem with my RAID controller, which I fixed with a driver update.
Vista does not recognize any of my old programs including Office 2007 beta.
My Question is should I restore the Vista C: drive with all the data from the new drive and then do an upgrade install, saving the new drive with all the old XP data, and then if I have a problem restore or replace the Boot drive?
Seems like there would be am eaiser way to do this that I am missing.
Thanks for any help here!!

Because you took the time and effort to actually do the whole thing correctly, do yourself a favor and play with Vista for a while. Yes you will have to install the programs, but that's part of the test and oh so much fun.
"Tom S." wrote:

I have backed up all the data on my Boot drive to a new I: drive and changed the boot order in the BIOS to be sure it would boot up okay, and it did. I then formateded the former C: drive and did a clean install of Vista, everything went fine except for a problem with my RAID controller, which I fixed with a driver update.
Vista does not recognize any of my old programs including Office 2007 beta.
My Question is should I restore the Vista C: drive with all the data from the new drive and then do an upgrade install, saving the new drive with all the old XP data, and then if I have a problem restore or replace the Boot drive?
Seems like there would be am eaiser way to do this that I am missing.
Thanks for any help here!!

Mark,
Thank you for the insightful reply; it was helpful in understanding the process. I guess I could have phrased my question differently, so let me try again.
Now that I have a mirror image of my XP boot drive on another drive, is it safe to restore my original boot drive with the data from the mirrored drive, and install Vista as an upgrade? Will this recognize all the programs and data on my other drives and will I be able to restore if I decide to replace the Vista drive with my mirrored XP drive?
I know reinstalling all the old software is part of the process of testing but I am about as unorganized as a person can be, so finding it all will take more time than it’s worth to me. This is my most powerful machine and also has XP MCE so I wanted to test it here. I have 4 other computers and most of my data is backed up one those, so if I crash it not that big a deal.
Has anyone tried this process?
Thanks again for your help!
Mark, Thank you for the insiteful
"Mark D. VandenBerg" wrote:

Because you took the time and effort to actually do the whole thing correctly, do yourself a favor and play with Vista for a while. Yes you will have to install the programs, but that's part of the test and oh so much fun.
"Tom S." wrote:
I have backed up all the data on my Boot drive to a new I: drive and changed the boot order in the BIOS to be sure it would boot up okay, and it did. I then formateded the former C: drive and did a clean install of Vista, everything went fine except for a problem with my RAID controller, which I fixed with a driver update.
Vista does not recognize any of my old programs including Office 2007 beta.
My Question is should I restore the Vista C: drive with all the data from the new drive and then do an upgrade install, saving the new drive with all the old XP data, and then if I have a problem restore or replace the Boot drive?
Seems like there would be am eaiser way to do this that I am missing.
Thanks for any help here!!

Yes, it is possible to upgrade from Windows XP Home/Professional to Vista Beta 2 32-bit (not 64-bit). When you do this, all the previous loaded programs come along for the ride, but there is no guarantee that all of them will work with Vista. There have been many success and many failures.
But I would add one step before you do so, since I am paranoid about data loss: if at all possible, back-up your back-up image to some location other than the same physical hard-drive even though it is in a separate partition. I keep mine on a USB dirve. This way, when things are literally on fire, you will have suffered no loss other than mental disorders.
Good luck and keep us posted!

"Tom S." wrote:

Mark,
Thank you for the insightful reply; it was helpful in understanding the process. I guess I could have phrased my question differently, so let me try again.
Now that I have a mirror image of my XP boot drive on another drive, is it safe to restore my original boot drive with the data from the mirrored drive, and install Vista as an upgrade? Will this recognize all the programs and data on my other drives and will I be able to restore if I decide to replace the Vista drive with my mirrored XP drive?
I know reinstalling all the old software is part of the process of testing but I am about as unorganized as a person can be, so finding it all will take more time than it’s worth to me. This is my most powerful machine and also has XP MCE so I wanted to test it here. I have 4 other computers and most of my data is backed up one those, so if I crash it not that big a deal.
Has anyone tried this process?
Thanks again for your help!
Mark, Thank you for the insiteful
"Mark D. VandenBerg" wrote:
Because you took the time and effort to actually do the whole thing correctly, do yourself a favor and play with Vista for a while. Yes you will have to install the programs, but that's part of the test and oh so much fun.
"Tom S." wrote:
I have backed up all the data on my Boot drive to a new I: drive and changed the boot order in the BIOS to be sure it would boot up okay, and it did. I then formateded the former C: drive and did a clean install of Vista, everything went fine except for a problem with my RAID controller, which I fixed with a driver update.
Vista does not recognize any of my old programs including Office 2007 beta.
My Question is should I restore the Vista C: drive with all the data from the new drive and then do an upgrade install, saving the new drive with all the old XP data, and then if I have a problem restore or replace the Boot drive?
Seems like there would be am eaiser way to do this that I am missing.
Thanks for any help here!!

A lot of persons are contemplating about upgrading their one and only, production install of XP. If you are itching to do that, DON'T! DO NOT upgrade your existing install of XP if you use it for work or you use it on a daily basis. Not because Vista is at BETA 2 means its ready for prime time or production environments, it is for testing and to get feedback on what's wrong with the product.
I also suspect some persons think Vista has been finalized, no its not, its still in development. I know Vista looks enticing and all, but it is still not ready for prime time and the numerous reports of unsuccessful, problematic clean installs, upgrades are proof of that.
If you want to try upgrade scenarios at least make sure you do it on a spare installation of XP, you have a back up image of your existing install or simply do a clean install on a separate drive or logical partition. For those who have already upgraded their installations of XP and want to return to XP, your only option is to format that drive and reinstall it. There is no way to uninstall Vista.
Also, there are no upgrade paths from Windows XP Professional x64 to Vista x86 or x64. You cannot launch Vista x64 setup in Windows XP x86 or you will get an "invalid Win32" error. You have to boot off the DVD. -- -- Andre Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
Just in case no one has said this - Thanks for all your work and

information.
Top
-- If can read this, thank a teacher. Since you are reading it in English, thank a Soldier.

Thanks again Mark,
Being as paranoid as you, my backup was to a new 200 GB SATA HD, and not a partition on an existing drive. I intend to disconnect this new drive from the system while attempting the upgrade and pending failure of the tests, I felt like I could just reinstall the new drive with the backup of XP MCE and all would be back to normal.
I guess I just wanted someone to confirm my thoughts before I jumped in feet first. The only drawbacks I could see is if Vista somehow changed the way the system boots or made some other changes that would prevent me from installing the backup drive and loosing the use of the machine without a total reformat and reinstall of the entire system.
Thanks Again!
"Mark D. VandenBerg" wrote:

Yes, it is possible to upgrade from Windows XP Home/Professional to Vista Beta 2 32-bit (not 64-bit). When you do this, all the previous loaded programs come along for the ride, but there is no guarantee that all of them will work with Vista. There have been many success and many failures.
But I would add one step before you do so, since I am paranoid about data loss: if at all possible, back-up your back-up image to some location other than the same physical hard-drive even though it is in a separate partition. I keep mine on a USB dirve. This way, when things are literally on fire, you will have suffered no loss other than mental disorders.
Good luck and keep us posted!

"Tom S." wrote:
Mark,
Thank you for the insightful reply; it was helpful in understanding the process. I guess I could have phrased my question differently, so let me try again.
Now that I have a mirror image of my XP boot drive on another drive, is it safe to restore my original boot drive with the data from the mirrored drive, and install Vista as an upgrade? Will this recognize all the programs and data on my other drives and will I be able to restore if I decide to replace the Vista drive with my mirrored XP drive?
I know reinstalling all the old software is part of the process of testing but I am about as unorganized as a person can be, so finding it all will take more time than it’s worth to me. This is my most powerful machine and also has XP MCE so I wanted to test it here. I have 4 other computers and most of my data is backed up one those, so if I crash it not that big a deal.
Has anyone tried this process?
Thanks again for your help!
Mark, Thank you for the insiteful
"Mark D. VandenBerg" wrote:
Because you took the time and effort to actually do the whole thing correctly, do yourself a favor and play with Vista for a while. Yes you will have to install the programs, but that's part of the test and oh so much fun.
"Tom S." wrote:
I have backed up all the data on my Boot drive to a new I: drive and changed the boot order in the BIOS to be sure it would boot up okay, and it did. I then formateded the former C: drive and did a clean install of Vista, everything went fine except for a problem with my RAID controller, which I fixed with a driver update.
Vista does not recognize any of my old programs including Office 2007 beta.
My Question is should I restore the Vista C: drive with all the data from the new drive and then do an upgrade install, saving the new drive with all the old XP data, and then if I have a problem restore or replace the Boot drive?
Seems like there would be am eaiser way to do this that I am missing.
Thanks for any help here!!