A couple of questions before I upgrade to W8

Chewbumpkin

:undecidedI downloaded the W8 upgrade just before the offer closed, but have not yet had the courage to install it, as I have a few reservations:
1. Will it really install without me losing any of my programmes, documents etc? I have backed them all up, but it would be a real hassle to have to put back everything afterwards. Also, what happens to any which may be incompatible? How can I tell if any of them are, and, if so, should I uninstall them first?
2. I understand that a new version of Internet Explorer is installed. Will it keep all my favourite sites or will I have to spend hours/days trying to remember and re-bookmarking them all? Is there a way of "saving" them prior to the upgrade?
3. I have seen on other threads that it is possible to get back to the W7 desktop. Should I download this before the upgrade or after? There is no way at all that my husband would be able to cope with the W8 screen - he has just got to grips with W7 and Office 10 and we have had these nearly 3 years!
4. Will I lose my sticky notes? I find them almost indispensable now. And also, will I still be able to have gadgets on my desktop?
Sorry for so many questions, but you folk are the best to ask and I cannot find an answer to these questions anywhere.

Lum

1) If you are currently running Windows 7 then yes. Apparently the upgrade process runs a lot smoother than in previous versions of Windows though I have no personal experience of it as I chose to wipe and reinstall anyway. When you run the upgrade assistant, it should produce a report saying what is compatible and what isn't.
2) Yes it should keep all your settings from your profile.
3) See this thread I made for a guide to make Win8 act like 7
4) Sticky notes: Don't know sorry. I've never used sticky notes, and I'm currently in work (on XP!) so can't test this.
Gadgets: No, these are removed for some reason. There is a program called 8gadgetpack that lets you put them back as a Vista-style sidebar, or alternatively you could use something like Rainmeter which is a lot more powerful, and less resource intensive, but also a lot more work to set it up how you like it.

Chewbumpkin

Many thanks Lum, I will be upgrading in the very near future. I have already seen and read your thread, and will definitely be referring to it after upgrading.
Thanks again for putting my mind to rest.:D

Fifer

I downloaded before the offer ended too but haven't installed yet. I'm thinking of installing on an SSD. I'm guessing that would have to be a fresh install?

Lum

It would be strongly recommended to do a fresh install if moving to an SSD yes. Windows 7 and 8 set themselves up differently on SSDs to ensure best performance, so if you clone your Win7 install first you won't get this and may end up with an incorrect partition alignment which will really kill SSD performance.

Technically you're not allowed to do a fresh install. The installer will check for the presence of Windows XP-7 on your system and if it's not there will install ok but set a flag that will make your system refuse to activate on an upgrade key.

It's then simply a case of changing that flag as described here. So long as you don't then go and use that Windows 7 install at the same time and/or on another PC it's still all legit and above board.

Jivesinger

Lum wrote: »

Technically you're not allowed to do a fresh install.

I'm not sure this is quite correct since you can do a fresh install by choosing options within the installer itself, without any registry hacks, so it must be allowed at some level.

When choosing partitions you can pick an option which allows you to delete the entire partition containing the previous install of Windows XP-7 and make it into unallocated space, so the install is on a fresh new partition which the Win 8 installer creates. I guess it checks for the presence of an earlier Windows before it gets to the point where it completely deletes it. I've used this approach than once and it's always activated automatically without me needing to do anything else.

However I suspect that using the method described to change the flag is probably simplest in this case.

Lum

Yes the only 100% legit way is to install and activate Windows 7, then boot the Win8 installer, delete the partitions and hope you get the install right first time because once you blow away Win 7. This will be flagged as a legit upgrade install without actually doing the upgrade.

However if you screw up and have to reboot and start again after blowing away the Win7 partition, it will not get flagged as an upgrade and you'll have the activations issues.

Just change the flag, it's a lot simpler, faster, and less wear on your SSD!

Johnmcl7

Jivesinger wrote: »

I'm not sure this is quite correct since you can do a fresh install by choosing options within the installer itself, without any registry hacks, so it must be allowed at some level.

You can only do it if there is an existing OS on the drive which is a candidate for upgrading, you can't do the install on a blank drive nor on an existing W8 machine which is why I'd say it isn't a fresh install.

I've had no trouble with the registry change/rearm command thankfully as I couldn't be bothered reinstalling 7 just so I could reinstall 8.

John

securityguy

Johnmcl7 wrote: »

You can only do it if there is an existing OS on the drive which is a candidate for upgrading, you can't do the install on a blank drive nor on an existing W8 machine which is why I'd say it isn't a fresh install.

Following advice on this very group, I tried the "run the W8 upgrader twice" option --- I do have a genuine full W7 retail license, so I don't see a problem from a licensing perspective --- and it worked. I was installing into a fresh VM (hosted on a non-Windows machine) rather than a fresh hard drive, but I can't see that would make any difference. Blank disk, run W8 installer, mount W8 installer into the new, unactivated image, run the W8 installer again, activate using upgrade product key. Worked fine.

martin57

Hi,

I bought the windows 8 upgrade some time ago (already got windows 7 oem) on my computer) installed windows 7 again on a spare partition and then upgraded it to 8.

So I now have a dual boot computer with both windows 7 and 8 on it, both activated

I dont use windows 8 very much just login now and again to keep it up to date.

Just wondering though will there be ever a time when microsoft will try to deactivate my copy of windows 7, because if I was forced to make a choice I would choose windows 7?

thanks if anyone can clear that up?

Martin57

Sosdon

Personally i would only install Win 8 if i was unhappy with Win 7..