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Crash wrote:
> Ah yeah gidday.
>
> Having a bit of time on my hands, I have been looking at Windows 7 as
> part of a replacement barebones box I am considering buying. I was
> somewhat astounded to find that 7 recognises only Vista as an
> 'upgradeable OS - specifically that where the OS is any other earlier
> version of Windows a complete OS reinstall is required. While this is
> not a consideration in the context of a new box I certainly wont be
> rushing to upgrade my other PCs if this is the case.
>
> I would have expected that at least for XP Windows 7 would install
> over the top of XP rather than requiring an OS install from scratch -
> including all the apps. The implication is that a format of C drive
> is required, making the process of upgrading XP to 7 a huge exercise
> relative to an over-the-top install.
>
> Surely I have got this wrong?

Nope, upgrading OS installations (both windows and linux) is the easiest
way to end up with a broken unstable system, and doing that from XP
(where the installation could potentially have ~6 years of accumulated
crap) would be asking for trouble. Combine with the change of driver
subsystems etc between XP and vista/Win7 and its a disaster waiting to
happen. You can possibly get away without reformatting the hard drive
(just nuke the windows XP instalation directory), but since you have to
reinstall your applications you are better off copying your data files
to another drive/partition and reformatting IMO.

Squiggle wrote:
>
> Nope, upgrading OS installations (both windows and linux) is the easiest
> way to end up with a broken unstable system....
>
Well, I've down several upgrades of my Ubuntu system, and while I've had
a few problems with upgrades over the years, it has usually gone
relatively smoothly.

But the *best* way is to reinstall on a clean drive, whatever the OS, I
agree.

I don't think many people actually upgrade windows - they just move on
to a new machine.

Cheers,

Cliff

--

The Internet is interesting in that although the nicknames may change,
the same old personalities show through.

Enkidu wrote:
> Squiggle wrote:
>>
>> Nope, upgrading OS installations (both windows and linux) is the
>> easiest way to end up with a broken unstable system....
> >
> Well, I've down several upgrades of my Ubuntu system, and while I've had
> a few problems with upgrades over the years, it has usually gone
> relatively smoothly.
>
> But the *best* way is to reinstall on a clean drive, whatever the OS, I
> agree.
>
> I don't think many people actually upgrade windows - they just move on
> to a new machine.

The last in place upgrade I did of a linux system was in the Redhat 6
era.. so maybe things have improved. I remember was ending up with
conflicts that the package manager couldn't sort out and my relative
noob-ness i tried to force a few packages to install.. needless to say a
day later it was a clean install.