Vista to Win7 Home

Wolf-R1

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 30, 2004
Messages
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To Upgrade or not to Upgrade. That is the question! :D

Seriously. I'm a big fan of clean installs. This is a laptop for my girfriend's son. A machine that's been sitting around doing nothing for a while. Comes natively with Vista on it. Looked around for XP drivers but HP graciously removed the XP drivers recently and won't dole them out unless I pay for another three years of support on a four year old laptop.

Anyway there's some software out there that won't install on Vista, I believe by virtue of the way it's coded. Rather than screw with it I'd put Win7 on it but the question is of cost. Do I tell her it's $180 for a full version of Win7 or $112 for the upgrade?

Since I'll end up being support for this thing anyway I'm inclined to go with the full version and a clean install. Ultimately my question is: Are upgrades still as messy down the road as they used to be? Are there still potential problems looming in the dark post upgrade?
 
Seriosly, are you wasting money into upgrading the os in a 4 year old laptop? Better, restore to factory condition and upgrade the hell of it via win update, if needed just add more ram.
 
you can still do a clean install with upgrade media.
if software is incompatible, then get at least Pro I believe; although spendier, it does come with XP mode free. And from what I remember reading, the CPU no longer needs the virtualization capabilities (vt-x, etc) since Microsoft released a patch/update to remove those requirements.
 
Order of OS upgrade means you get discount because you already own previous version, but once you get the key, you can either upgrade your current installation or do clean reinstall. It's not as it sounds, that when you buy it you can only upgrade your current installation and then you can't do clean install.
 
you can still do a clean install with upgrade media.
if software is incompatible, then get at least Pro I believe; although spendier, it does come with XP mode free. And from what I remember reading, the CPU no longer needs the virtualization capabilities (vt-x, etc) since Microsoft released a patch/update to remove those requirements.

Can't do a 'clean install'. Best I've got is HP's system restore which puts back onto it all the crap that HP ships with the PC. Not much but it's there.

I'm tempted to ask here, what exactly won't install under Vista that will do under 7?

Intell Appup. The install halts on Vista. People have gotten it to install by running the installer in XP compatibility mode but it runs problematic later on. Admittedly I've not gone much father with other apps as I recall the 'Vista days' and really don't want to relive it if I don't have to.
 
Order of OS upgrade means you get discount because you already own previous version, but once you get the key, you can either upgrade your current installation or do clean reinstall. It's not as it sounds, that when you buy it you can only upgrade your current installation and then you can't do clean install.

So if I buy this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...windows_7_home_premium-_-32-116-713-_-Product

I still have the option of wiping the system clean and doing a fresh install?
 
Can't do a 'clean install'. Best I've got is HP's system restore which puts back onto it all the crap that HP ships with the PC. Not much but it's there.

Intell Appup. The install halts on Vista. People have gotten it to install by running the installer in XP compatibility mode but it runs problematic later on. Admittedly I've not gone much father with other apps as I recall the 'Vista days' and really don't want to relive it if I don't have to.


lawl you can do clean install and Intel App up is not a reason to upgrade your OS... if you are running vista home premium there is absolutely no good reason to spend money on an upgrade to windows 7.... if you are a corporate user there are several compelling reasons to upgrade to 7 Pro over vista pro......
 
Anyway there's some software out there that won't install on Vista, I believe by virtue of the way it's coded. Rather than screw with it I'd put Win7 on it but the question is of cost. Do I tell her it's $180 for a full version of Win7 or $112 for the upgrade?
The software likely won't run on 7 either. 7 is no more compatible than Vista was, it's just software manufacturers have had more time to tune their software to Microsoft's new OSes.
 
Thanks for all the help. ;)

Yes the things that Vista won't run do run in Win7. As stated in the original post the issue is that I will likely become tech support for this machine. Thus the fewer the headaches the less work I have to do. I never liked Vista and don't want to have to deal with it every time the boy wants to install something and doesn't run because of Vista.
 
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