Vista Upgrade vs. Clean Install

Ok...know these things have been discussed before, but any comments welcome.

My Vista upgrade disc is arriving next week (on an nw9440 with Windows XP purchased in Dec 2006), and I'm planning to install Vista.

My question is: should I just upgrade (my preference) or should I do a clean install and reinstall my apps? Has anyone who upgraded experienced any problems?

 

Upgrade was the best path for me, ditch the HP drivers cd and only use the Vista Upgrade. Everything worked well for me, only program I couldn't use was AutoCad Civil '07 but I already knew about it. Then all my files, programs, pics. transfered without a hitch. Vista found all my drivers and EVERYTHING in my comp. works as advertised.

DV2100T CTO

 

Don't quote me on this, but I think upgrading will negatively impact performance. Doing a clean install is a hassle, but it is the best.

 

Well, I have no doubt that's true---the question I have is: how much will it really impact performance? Can anyone give me actual information about the difference? If it's a lot, I'll do a clean install. If it's not, I won't.

When I first got this machine (about 4+ months or so ago) I went through the exercise of cleaning out unwanted startup programs and disabling all possible unnecessary services. I found that the performance difference was approximately nada.

 

It's more of a psychological thing. For me, I always want my things (especially things that I use often) to have a good clean start. I can remove/disable stuff from its factory setting to speed things up, but knowing that it doesn't get rid of everything kind of bothers me. I want all bloatware OUT! So I normally play around with a new machine for a while, copy HP folders (definitely the drivers folder) that I think I might need in the future. After all the exploring is done, I reformat, or in this case, go for the full upgrade. You'll be happy that you know exactly what is being installed to your machine from the start, rather than starting in the middle. So yeah... having full control and full awareness of my belongings is just what I try to achieve. Like you have already mentioned, I too have read people saying that their computer is much faster after a clean install, but that could be a placebo effect... The best decision, is your decision. =)

 

to tell you the truth clean install is the best choice.
if you know what you are doing then it will be a breeze.
first if you want to dual boot you need to have another partition (use partition magic)
then when you put the upgrade disc and asks where u want to install just click custom and click the partition u want to install it to. then you are done
after that is just the drivers, but thats usually all included in the drivers disc.

 

With Microsoft:
1. Upgrades replace newer version of files but they don't completely remove unused ones - so that would have an impact on your available space.
2. Unused registry entries remain, and that one has the impact on your ongoing performance as the registry is bloated from start...
3. Uninstalls are never 100% perfect and residue is always left to avoid the risk of inter-locked dependencies, mainly because every software developer thinks his software will always be there and it just can't be that something installed before would actually be removed after...

So I say - clean install!

 

My HP disc wouldn't let me upgrade, only clean install.

However, it did copy and put the "Windows", "Program Files" & and "Documents and Settings" folders into a folder called "Windows.old" so I could access all my old files.

 

Upgrading on top of an existing older OS is almost always going to be a less satisfying experience than clean install. This is because of all the crud left behind and the fact that some things you were using won't work as well/at all with the new OS.

When I used the "upgrade cd" from HP there wasn't an option to do a true upgrade anyway, I had to clean install Vista Home Premium. This wasn't really a big deal because I planned on wiping the whole thing and putting Vista Ultimate on it anyway.