Vista 64 to Win 7 64, upgrade review

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lens pirate

Weaksauce
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Jan 1, 2009
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I know everyone here will tell you to do a clean install of Windows 7. I but read some Interesting things about the process and wanted to give it a try.

1. The prep: I ran the compatibility check tool from Microsoft to look for potential problems. It listed three programs that should be uninstalled prior to the upgrade.
None were big deals to uninstall. My ESET (nod32) Anti virus version 3, a Canon camera utility and a old version of Adobe PDFreader.

Addtionally I killed my Ramdisk, disconnected all USB devices besides the keyboard and mouse. I discconnected from network drive mappings.

I made sure Vista was totally patched up as well as made sure all drivers were current. All applications patched to the most recent revision.

I ran check disk, defrag, and a registry cleaner.

2. The Install: I ran the upgrade following the on-screen prompts. Vista ultimate 64 to Win 7 Ultimate 64. Perfect no errors or trouble at all.

3. The results: As near as I can tell it went perfectly. Far faster and with less effort than re-building and re-installing all my software would have been.

The PC boots MUCH MUCH faster, is very snappy feeling. All of my programs work, no driver issues what so ever. I ran a registry cleaner again, defrag and removed temp files an old windows files left over from the the upgrade ( disk clean up finds them for you and removes them) The machine is clean rock solid and feels and look like a brand new install.

As far as I know MS has never pulled this off before. It "just worked" I kind of felt like a MAC user for a little bit. I sat in a sort of awed trance that it went so well and cleanly.

Until this I would have never suggested a version upgrade to a running O/S. Thanks to the Article over on Anandtech that to the reviewers amazement was able to suggest this as a viable option I decided to try. I am glad I did.

Try it! :D
 
That's all well and good, and I'm glad it worked, but there's always a chance of instability, if anything is left on the drive from the previous OS. What always gets me though, is given the amount of time it took to do your prep work...I could have done a full, clean install with Windows 7 and been back up and running again as well. The main reason people are afraid to go the clean install route is because they feel it takes too long to do the reinstall. That tells me that they haven't installed Windows 7 before, don't keep their data organized (better reason to do a fresh install), or both.

Don't take this as criticism, because I'm glad to see it works for people who choose that option. In a perfect world, the experience would be great regardless of how you get Windows 7 on the computer.
 
DeaconFrost said:
That's all well and good, and I'm glad it worked, but there's always a chance of instability, if anything is left on the drive from the previous OS. What always gets me though, is given the amount of time it took to do your prep work...I could have done a full, clean install with Windows 7 and been back up and running again as well. The main reason people are afraid to go the clean install route is because they feel it takes too long to do the reinstall. That tells me that they haven't installed Windows 7 before, don't keep their data organized (better reason to do a fresh install), or both.

Don't take this as criticism, because I'm glad to see it works for people who choose that option. In a perfect world, the experience would be great regardless of how you get Windows 7 on the computer.
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All true.... guilty as charged. I have lots of programs installed that I could not really place my hands on the install media. Lots of settings I have tweaked, Options set my way.
None of it documented very well. My prep work took less time than a complete install of adobe CS4 master suite with a gig and a half of updates. Lots of the prep work was just verifing things were ok as I keep my machine updated and well oiled anyway.

I have stuff backed up but kind of all over the place on various NAS devices. It was not my intent to do this. I had planned on a clean inst. But thought what the heck after reading some many positive things about the upgrade process.

So yeah this may not work well for everyone or even the majority. But it worked for me and far exceeded my expectations. After this I also did my Laptop. Went just as well.

I guess my point is this is a viable option for some folks, and can save time and head aches. I also wanted to share my amazement.
 
I can attest, as well, to a nice upgrade experience from Vista Business 64 to Windows 7 Pro. It took only a couple hours to do, mostly unattended. Although, I have things nicely segregated on my drives, network storage, etc., but I just decided to give it a try to see what would happen. I could always re-install cleanly, if needed. It was the first time I ever did an upgrade on a Windows OS, dating back to the Windows 95 days. It has been about a week but so, far so good. :D
 
Thanks for the heads up on this. I think I am going to try this.

I have a well organized computer, the problem is I have a ton of programs I would need to re-install that I am dreading.

Traktor
Samplitude
Something like 100 vsti programs
Vegas
Photoshop
etc etc

I am seriously dreading re-intalling everything.

Anyone have more input on this. If the consensus really is to do a clean install I will but it sure won't be fun.
 
I just completed and upgrade from Vista Ultimate x64 to Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and so far everything is working correctly. I had just reinstalled Vista about 2 months ago after a hard drive crash and I did not want to reinstall everything again. Upgrade took about 2 hours from start to desktop. So far I have tried the following apps and all appears to be working normally:

Steam
Office 2007
Firefox
Photoshop
Winrar
Zune 4.0 software (love the integration of Zune software to the taskbar)
ITunes (Bloatware)
MSE
Utorrent
Seagate backup software
Citrix client (work)

Need to test out more things, but so far so good. It is worth exploring this option, if you can.
 
lens pirate said:
All true.... guilty as charged. I have lots of programs installed that I could not really place my hands on the install media. Lots of settings I have tweaked, Options set my way.
Click to expand...

Same here.. I actually have most of the install media available as .iso files on a 500GB external drive, but simply re-installing everything, then hunting down all the relevant patches and updates, and configuring all the preferences and settings would take days if not weeks. Not to mention things like getting punished for owning legit software... Getting locked out of certain games or program over the weekend because I've run out of activations and can't call to manually reset the count...

I did perform a clean install of Win7 RC and then again when I got the final version, but now I'm sticking with my installation until I absolutely have to reformat. I even do a full backup of my C: drive twice a week using TrueImage, so I can roll back without having to reinstall everything.
 
I am still very happy with my in place upgrade. Here is a list of clean up tasks all optional that I think are worth doing:

1. Run disk clean up. It will find all files orphaned or left behind by the upgrade.
2. Install latest Win 7 drivers for your stuff.
3. Defrag and run CCleaner.
4. Delete your Index file for windows search and re-index.

I know people are really resistant to this idea of not doing a clean install. But MS seems to have really nailed it this time.
 
I think because in reality W7 is just a vista update and that is why the in-place is working so well.
 
I followed the above advice and it worked a treat. The only thing is: pre-download all the most up to date Win 7 32/64 drivers you are going to need for you hardware (at the very least all the drivers for your motherboard).
 
Better to do things right the first time and do a reformat/clean install.
 
Jon55 said:
Better to do things right the first time and do a reformat/clean install.
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such uninformed advice these days. Seriously. I guess i can get that its advice that is hard to let go of from past windows iterations.

Upgrading to win7 from vista is a no brainer. Unless you just need to wipe your system for one reason or another, there is seriously no need. Even going from XP to Vista to W7 is painless and stable.
 
4saken said:
such uninformed advice these days. Seriously. I guess i can get that its advice that is hard to let go of from past windows iterations.
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Why is it uninformed? It doesn't take much longer than an upgrade install, gives you a chance to install the latest drivers and apps, and leaves out any major variables if there is a problem. If you go to some other Windows-only type forums, you'll find people riddled with issues after upgrade installs. Now that you can do a clean OS install in about 10 minutes, with another 30-45 spent on updates and app installs, why not?

You may not like the idea, but there's nothing wrong with doing a clean install. Calling it uninformed...is, well, uninformed.
 
4saken said:
such uninformed advice these days. Seriously. I guess i can get that its advice that is hard to let go of from past windows iterations.

Upgrading to win7 from vista is a no brainer. Unless you just need to wipe your system for one reason or another, there is seriously no need. Even going from XP to Vista to W7 is painless and stable.
Click to expand...

I know, right? People use the "Upgrade" option, and then suddenly when they run into all these little issues with drivers and programs they wonder what happened. Then they spend hours and hours trying to hunt down each issue and fix them. Then they wonder where all their HDD space went because it's now taken up by a nice Windows.old folder and other cluttered old drivers.:rolleyes:

Upgrading is the lazy way out, plain and simple. If it's someone who doesn't have the technical skills to do a clean install, that's one thing and completely understandable. But for enthusiasts, it's just damn lazy. "But my settings and options!", "Reinstalling programs takes too long". Give me a break.
 
only time I did an upgrade was when I used my dell windows 7 dvd on my home PC and then proceeded to "upgrade" to Windows 7 Ultimate using my MS provided key that they gave me with 32bit software.

10 mins and I was done
 
Jon55 said:
I know, right? People use the "Upgrade" option, and then suddenly when they run into all these little issues with drivers and programs they wonder what happened. Then they spend hours and hours trying to hunt down each issue and fix them. Then they wonder where all their HDD space went because it's now taken up by a nice Windows.old folder and other cluttered old drivers.:rolleyes:

Upgrading is the lazy way out, plain and simple. If it's someone who doesn't have the technical skills to do a clean install, that's one thing and completely understandable. But for enthusiasts, it's just damn lazy. "But my settings and options!", "Reinstalling programs takes too long". Give me a break.
Click to expand...

Tripping bro. Seriously. You can take a win7 install to a completely new system, diff mobo, diff memory, diff vid card, etc etc and boot it up no problems. No reason to bother anymore unless you already have a fucked up system. basically if you feel the need to format, thats fine, but if you think its necessary now, you are just doing it wrong.
 
4saken said:
Tripping bro. Seriously. You can take a win7 install to a completely new system, diff mobo, diff memory, diff vid card, etc etc and boot it up no problems. No reason to bother anymore unless you already have a fucked up system. basically if you feel the need to format, thats fine, but if you think its necessary now, you are just doing it wrong.
Click to expand...

Try to justify it however you want, it's still lazy. Sure it might work, but it takes all of 30 unattended minutes to install Windows 7, and reinstalling drivers is something you'd have to do anyway. Games and programs are mostly unattended installs as well. To each their own, but I'd rather do things right the first time instead of half-assing it.
 
Bah, I'm running a Win 7 Ultimate SP1 box on an i7 that started life as a Vista x64 install on a E6600. In between that time, it's been on a Q6600, to different dual Xeon setups as well as done some Westmere testing. I've had at least 6 different video cards including crossfire and SLI setups while testing crap out and crunching/folding. Call me lazy or whatever, but I've had no issues in the past 4+ years it's been running. My only worry is how long this Raptor 160 is going to last...

Then again, I do have 6 other OS installs running as well, so it's not like I haven't been doing full installs on other hardware during that time.
 
0100 said:
I think because in reality W7 is just a vista update and that is why the in-place is working so well.
Click to expand...


Thanks for saving me $100. I was just about to upgrade to 7 "just because" but my vista 64 has been rock solid.
 
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