Windows 7 Upgrade

Fairwinds

I'm intending to upgrade Dell Inspison 1525 Laptop from Vista to Windows 7 Prof.

When I start the process I see that the their is an OEM partion of about 45Gb, where I take it Vista is installed - first question is where do i insatall 7 - it won't let me use the partition - what happens to the partion if I install on C..

I believe I need to do a full install and have already run windows easy transfer ( took most of the afternoon)

Many thanks

Hammyman

It'll install it on C and overwrite the Vista installation. You do not need to do a clean full install, only people upgrading from XP need to do that. If you do decide to do a clean install then if you don't format the drive, the original User folders and Windows folders will be copied to User.old and Windows.old folders.

Fairwinds

thanks for that,i had rear that because it was processional an upgrade wouldn't work. Is that not correct? Will a format be part of the installation proces

spannerzone

and of course remember that the Dell backup utility may still access the original partition that contains the Vista installation recovery files so once W7 is installed don't use the Dell recovery option or you'll go back to Vista (and no one would ever want that!)


Don't forget to back up everything that's important in case something goes wrong!

These guides may help with your upgrade
http://windows7homepremium.windowsreinstall.com/windows7upgradeguides/index.htm

you may also want to download drivers for your PC before doing this in case Win7 needs a network driver and if you have only 1 pc then you can't get online to download any updates/drivers which is most annoying.

abisum

spannerzone wrote: »

you may also want to download drivers for your PC before doing this in case Win7 needs a network driver and if you have only 1 pc then you can't get online to download any updates/drivers which is most annoying.

Though most drivers from vista can be used in windows 7 and that some drivers are updated using the windows update service.

Hammyman

GordonD wrote: »

thanks for that,i had rear that because it was processional an upgrade wouldn't work. Is that not correct? Will a format be part of the installation proces

You have to manually select to format a drive already formatted. It won't do it by accident even if you select clean install.

Fairwinds

Hammyman wrote: »

, the original User folders and Windows folders will be copied to User.old and Windows.old folders.

Install seems to have gone sucessfully, can I now delete the user.old and windows.old?