Windows 7 - Upgrade/Clean Install

[DIGItonium]

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?

[Anatoray]

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

[370Zsteve]

Originally Posted by DIGItonium

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?

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.

[DIGItonium]

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).

[theDreamer]

***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.****

[theDreamer]

***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.****

[theDreamer]

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

[awesomez]

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.

[370Zsteve]

Originally Posted by theDreamer

Since Vista you have been able to do clean installs of Windows OS (Vista or 7) with just an upgrade disk.

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

[MightyBobo]

Originally Posted by theDreamer

if you follow these steps all information on your primary hard drive (Disk 0) will be gone forever.

Not true

[azn370z]

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

[DIGItonium]

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.

Originally Posted by 370Zsteve

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

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

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!

[theDreamer]

Originally Posted by MightyBobo

Not true

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.

[theDreamer]

Originally Posted by DIGItonium

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?

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!

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.

[MightyBobo]

Originally Posted by theDreamer

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.

OK, just making sure that was understood lol