Any evidence a clean install is faster than upgrade? (Win10)

H-street

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I have my main pc that is fairly heavily setup. All my programs and games.

Is there any evidence outside of anecdotal that the clean installation is faster? Many of these types of ideas have been hanging around since win98 days when it did matter but just trying to see if it really is worth the effort to clean install or just upgrade
 
I'll make it short and sweet: it sure as hell can't hurt. ;)

I've done three upgrades in 30+ years of using Windows operating systems: Windows 98SE on top of Windows 98, and two machines I just upgraded to Windows 10 Pro over Windows 7 Pro, and immediately did clean installs for both instances (and didn't have to worry about a Product Key either).

My recommendation to people is always do a clean install, but I know that some people are in situations where it's just not a feasible solution because of having a ton of applications installed, not knowing where the serial/registration keys might be in case they had to reinstall, or any of another dozen reasons.

Is a clean install faster than an upgrade? Well, one thinking logically would say yes since there's absolutely nothing remaining of the previous install so there shouldn't be anything that could cause issues because of an upgrade which does basically work in-place, so the Registry gets transferred over (it's still got to be loaded with all the info for all the stuff that's installed when the upgrade takes place, etc).

I just recommend a clean install, period, and I never recommend upgrades but this time out Microsoft didn't give me or others much choice since this Windows 10 thing is an upgrade-only offer to get it free of charge presently. You can clean install whenever you want afterward but the first time has to be an upgrade.

If you do the upgrade and you're happy with everything and it's working as you would expect without issues, then no, there's no immediate overwhelming reason to clean install. But it's a consideration especially if you do find some issues along the way.
 
If you do an upgrade but choose not to save any files or applications it is almost like a clean install:
The old windows directory is named windows.old and can be removed with disk cleanup.
Users, Program Files, Program Files x86, and ProgramData are all removed.
No settings are carried over.

Files that I had in my C (SteamLibrary for SSD speed) remained. The install did not touch the other 3 drives in my computer.
 
I've upgraded three computers at home, of varying spec and software loadouts. All three upgraded flawlessly and have no issues. However, I will say I am a fairly responsible Windows user and I tend to avoid a lot of cruft apps and junk.

I also upgraded my laptop at work, which has a typical IT worker's application loadout. It also upgraded flawlessly and performance is as I expect it.
 
The OP didn't make it clear if he meant if the install process itself is faster or the resulting system...
 
I've seen various reports from people on the length of time an upgrade takes and if I had to say anything I'd say the length of time depends more on how much "stuff" you have installed presently than anything else. My initial upgrade to Windows 10 on my laptop (with maybe 9 applications installed) took like 23 minutes from start to finish doing the upgrade off files extracted from the ISO (build 10240) where I ran the setup.exe so it was all done off the hard drive (not a Flash drive or optical media). Some folks report it's taking hours for them, others report even less time required than I did.

A clean install on this same laptop from a USB stick takes about 20 mins start to finish and this is a 7200 rpm hard drive based laptop. Windows 7 installs in under 13 mins on the same machine, boots faster and shuts down faster too. I know Windows 10 is supposed to be faster in most respects but in my experience on this pure Intel hardware laptop it's not.
 
the resulting system of course,

That is exactly what I was thinking, some claiming their "clean" install is faster is more likely a result of just not as much being installed (their anecdotal claim usually comes immediately after the installation)

if I choose to "Keep" everything on the upgrade, is that limited to just the User Folder data? or is that also including Drivers in my windows driver store?

..
 
I've only used the TP versions but did both clean installs and upgrade installs. Seems like MS pretty much carried everything from one build to the next on the upgrades--even the "hacks" I did to get some color on the windows title bars--surprised they didn't clean that up. The upgrade would even keep the settings I'd made in Nvidia control panel and when it installed drivers; it didn't install the stuff I had specifically turned off (Nvidia 3D driver, etc.). Earlier on the drivers would reinstall all that and I'd have to go back and uninstall it. Seemed the OS did "learn" my machine and preferences as time went on.

Didn't notice any particular difference in the response of the OS using clean vs. update installs, at least on the previews. Last was the RTM build which is pretty much what has been released to the public.
 
An upgrade is a clean install. We aren't in the Windows XP days anymore. Microsoft basically ripped off Apple's upgrade method: blow away the old install, make a fresh install, the import settings and configs from the previous install. Your old Windows installation will be in a folder called Windows.old can that can be deleted via Disk Cleanup. (Reboot a couple of times before you run it, though.)

The only difference between an upgrade and a fresh install of Windows right now is psychological.
 
An upgrade is a clean install. We aren't in the Windows XP days anymore. Microsoft basically ripped off Apple's upgrade method: blow away the old install, make a fresh install, the import settings and configs from the previous install. Your old Windows installation will be in a folder called Windows.old can that can be deleted via Disk Cleanup. (Reboot a couple of times before you run it, though.)

The only difference between an upgrade and a fresh install of Windows right now is psychological.

^This +100.
 
Because my win 7 installation had a lot of programs and stuff, and had been running for quite some time - the upgrade process took almost double the time. 40 min vs about 25 on a formatted disk clean install from an iso.

I can't imagine actual run speed post installation would be any different (understanding of course that a clean install with nothing installed will be faster than an install that has 1000 programs firing up at startup - the clean install will get there too eventually)
 
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