Upgrade and Full Version Baloney

First, a rant. It took me longer to decide how I was going to install Windows 7 than to actually install it. Although this delay was partly due to my idiosyncrasies, I think a lot of the fault here lies with Microsoft and the confusion they engender (inadvertently, I hope) by releasing “upgrade” and “full” versions of their operating systems. According to Microsoft, if you have a valid installation of Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Vista, you qualify for the upgrade version. Ok. So, what if you have Vista Home Premium; can you upgrade to Windows 7 Professional? Ultimate? What if you have a 32-bit OS; can you upgrade to a 64-bit version of Windows 7? Can you “clean” install (i.e., format your hard drive and reinstall your OS completely?) or can you only do that with the full version? Does the upgrade license entitle you to install Windows 7 to a new partition? You can see where I’m going with this. There are just a host of ridiculously complex questions created by distinguishing between upgrade and full versions. Just release one version at a reasonable price – problem solved! Unfortunately, many people do not understand precisely the differences between these two versions and, importantly, what the limitations are, and I wasn’t immune to this confusion.

Okay, I just had to get that out.

Planning the Attack

I think I officially kicked off the upgrade process when I watched a cnet video on how to upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7. It was a great, simple, step-by-step explanation, along with good recommendations on how to backup data. Thanks to this video, I learned about Windows Easy Transfer, which is basically a wizard that lets you choose what users, files, and settings you want to migrate from one version of Windows to another. You just press a few buttons, hook up an external hard drive and let the process take care of itself. I’ve always been a fan of set it and forget it!

I decided to heed cnet’s advice and get a little anal about ensuring that all my data was backed up in a safe place. I’ve been pretty lackluster about regularly backing up my data, and in light of the near misses I’ve had in the past (see here and here, among other examples), I decided I’d go the whole nine yards. I bought a very reasonably-priced 1TB (yes, that’s terabyte) Western Digital external hard drive, downloaded Macrium Reflect, and backed up the partitions on both my desktop and laptop. So, far so good!

Importantly, I learned after watching the cnet video that since I’d be upgrading from Windows XP, I’d have to do a “custom installation” which I understood to mean that Windows 7 would install as a clean copy over my existing OS and preserve my old files (music, documents, pictures, etc) in a folder called Windows.old that I could still access after the installation. However, I’d lose all my programs. I didn’t care about losing any of my programs; all of my previous OS reinstallations have been “clean” installs, which means I’ve completely formatted the hard drive and installed a fresh copy of the OS, so I was actually happy to see that I’d be forced to reinstall Windows 7 with the “custom install” option. Vista users can do an “in-place upgrade,” which basically means all your files and programs automatically migrate to Windows 7. I had the option of doing an in-place upgrade on my laptop. However, since I’ve generally viewed my experience using Windows Vista on my laptop as a form of torture, I was more than happy to bypass the in-place upgrade option on my laptop as well and also do a custom installation.

For a while, I toyed around with the idea of installing Windows 7 on separate partitions on my desktop and laptops. I took this path when I installed the Windows 7 Release Candidate and it worked like a charm. I figured there might be some benefit in allowing myself to ease into Windows 7 by keeping my old OS installed for the initial stages, just in case something went horribly wrong. I event went so far as to create a new 60 GB partition on my laptop hard drive for Windows 7. However, the more I thought about it, installing to a separate partition didn’t make sense; I wouldn’t have enough space to migrate all my files to the new partition, and I was already used to using Windows 7 thanks to the Release Candidate. In addition, I also knew that I wasn’t going to have any hardware or system configuration problems with Windows 7. So, I decided not to waste my time with new partitions.

I also spent some time (but not a lot) thinking about whether to install the 32-bit or 64-bit version on my desktop. From what I can tell, the only significant difference between the two at this point is that the 64-bit version handles memory better and as a result can recognize systems with greater than 2 gb of RAM, whereas a 32-bit version cannot. After some additional research, I figured I might as well install the 64-bit version since it will likely become the mainstream platform soon.

So, it was settled. I’d do custom installations on both my desktop and laptop on the primary partitions. I’d be getting a clean install on both computers and starting off exactly where I wanted to.

Then I saw this article, and my world was thrown into upheaval.

Roadblock

The author of that article seemed to suggest that there is a difference between doing a custom install (which I understood to be a fresh install) and doing a clean install (i.e., formatting your hard drive and installing anew). Even worse, he was suggesting that there might be license key issues with users who take the latter approach. I was completely thrown for a loop after reading this article, and I considered changing approaches. Maybe I should install to a separate partition after all? But then I’d lose the benefit of the Windows.old folder. Maybe I should follow the author’s advice and simply reformat and install anew? But then I’d again lose the benefit of the Windows.old folder and potentially run into license key issues (this apparently wasn’t happening for the majority of users, and if it did Microsoft later said that they’d issue a new license key, no questions asked). This issue really bothered me, and others as well. I was desperate to figure out what the difference was between a custom install and clean install. I was so bothered I even called Microsoft tech support to try to get an answer (of course, they weren’t able to help me).

Finally, I saw the light. I posted a thread on Microsoft’s TechNet forums asking what the heck the difference was between a custom install and a clean install. Knowledgeable folks assured me that there were only minor, if any, differences, and that the best approach would be to do a custom installation. I found further reassurance when Windows guru Paul Thurrott even suggested doing a custom installation so that you get the benefit of the Windows.old folder.

So, after a momentary panic, I decided my original plan was still good to go, and I delved in.

Mindnumbingly Easy

The actual installation was a synch and didn’t even take that long on either my desktop or laptop. On my laptop, since I was upgrading to the 64-bit version of Windows 7, I had to boot up from the Windows 7 DVD and install from there. The process was a piece of cake. Within 30 minutes, I was up and running.

My laptop was also a pretty simple upgrade. I booted up from the DVD and did a custom installation over my existing Vista install, and I was up and running in no time. One snafu worth mentioning: I was downloading various drivers and software for my laptop and somehow managed to damage the system, or at least cause it to run very, very slowly. I tried to uninstall the program, to no avail. I wasn’t willing to jinx a fresh install of an OS so early, so I decided I wouldn’t take any risks and I reinstalled Windows 7. However, this time, I got a little creative and formatted the existing partition first, and then installed. Although the cnet article I mentioned earlier had suggested that this approach had caused problems for some people, I didn’t have any.

And that’s that! I’m now a happy Windows 7 user on my desktop and laptop. So, while the installation itself was a breeze, gearing up for it was a pain in the butt. Yes, I probably paid a little more attention to detail than was necessary, but I’m a stickler for these sorts of things.

Coming up next: my impressions of Windows 7 after a month of use!