Windows 7 upgrading

[Lifty]

Well over the past few month's a lot of junk has been collecting on my HD, (unused games movies, failed programs i tried to make) and i was wondering if i format my HD, could i still clean install windows 7 with my upgrade version?

 

[metro]

Reinstalling Windows is a lot of work. I would suggest just purging your computer from all unused files and programs and defragmenting. Using a program such as Revo Uninstaller (it's free!) will help you clean up your registry and speed things up.

 

[shadows5631]

Yesterday I did this same thing for my brother.

He didn't want to lose his Steam so we didn't reformat, instead we just installed the 7 upgrade and it made a folder 'windows.old' that had almost every file he had before. And success, Steam ran just fine and all his games were still there.

As for clean install, you could just run the upgrade and whenever it's done, delete the windows.old file and it would be almost the same thing.

 

[Snuf]

I say Backup everything you need to and do a Clean Install. A Clean Install with Windows 7 is very easy. The hardest part is reinstalling all your Apps.

 

[metro]

Reinstalling Windows and getting all your necessary programs back the way you like them will most likely take you an entire day, even if your files are backed up. I believe it's much easier to remove the programs and files you no longer use and then defrag overnight. Here's a list of programs that would most likely have to be reinstalled:

• Steam
• All your games
• Vent
• Some form of Office
• Flash Player
• Adobe Reader
• Antivirus
• Firefox/Chrome

That's just a small list I thought of off the top of my head. IMHO, it's much easier to remove 10 programs and defrag then to reinstall Windows. This is especially the case if it is your main/only computer and you can't afford to be without it.

 

[Simon]

I believe you can, it was an option on my upgrade CD.

 

[Passerby]

it can be a lot work to reinstall depending on how your computer is setup but things runn a hell of a lot better with a clean install.

but it all depends i do clean installs a lot so i made things really easy and quick on my setup to do that. i keep my data on a different drive from the operating system and i made a disk image of a full windows install including my drivers and most used apps. and wiht that it olny takes about 15 minutes to get a fully working windows install up with all of my settings and applications from nothing.

 

[Electrolite]

Formating remove spyware ,old registry and virus. You should thing about it.

 

[Fear Feathers]

clean install>upgrade