I’m going to be upgrading from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional, but from everywhere I’ve read that would require a clean installation. However none of those specify if that requires a full version to do a clean install. Is is possible just to buy an Upgrade/ System Builder version of Professional, or am I going to have to buy the full version of Professional to do the clean install?
if you have the right type of license and the same CPU type (x64/32bit) you can do an upgrade that keeps all your programs and most of your settings.
As long as you own a copy of windows currently you can use an upgrade disk for either an “in-place” upgrade or a clean install.
Like sersoft said, if you’re upgrading from 32-bit to 32-bit or 64-bit to 64-bit you can use the “in-place” option and keep most of your programs, documents, and settings. Otherwise you’ll have to back everything up and do a clean install.
Upgrades sometimes get messy. Just backup your important files and do a clean install. Less chance of shit happening in the long run.
And you get some extra free space.
A clean install FTW!
…at least for a couple of weeks.
My vote is for a clean install as well.
Get the OEM (full) version of Win7 Pro and do a clean install. Save yourself lots-o-money. Just remember to save any old hardware (Vista) PC drivers/CDs for use in loading Win7. Once all h/w is recognized in 7, then just update drivers online.
Better yet, get a new larger HDD (just make sure your HDD controller can handle partitions >137GB if IDE drive, no problems going 1TB if SATA) and swap out the Vista HDD and install Win7 fresh on new HDD. If any h/w is not recognized, then you can always swap back. If all goes well, install the old drive as a slave and copy over your data files. Then wipe the old drive and use it for additional storage in Win7.
Oh yeah, while you’re at it, you may want to upgrade the memory to at least 2GB.