Windows 7 upgrade questions

[tango5]

Hey guys, i bought a new desk top PC a few months ago before the release of Windows 7. They had a promo where you can send off for the free Home Premium Edition of Windows 7 as an upgrade when it came out. It came in the mail today. My question is, if i install this, will i lose all the stuff i have on my HD, like games, photos, programs etc..? Thanks in advance.

Jason

[bigmike82]

If you just upgrade, you shouldn't lose any of your data.

That said....before you do upgrade....Back up everything you can recreate or reload. There is always a risk when you install new software, and especially a new OS. You should really back up your data on a regular basis anyway, but especially so before an upgrade.

[Telperion]

There are two ways to install Windows 7 - upgrade or clean install (called custom install by MS). If you upgrade from Vista (presumably if your computer is so new, it would be running Vista), then everything will be upgraded in place. If you choose a clean install, all your files and programs will be moved to a Windows.old directory on your hard drive. You will need to reinstall all your programs and copy your documents and configuration files from the Windows.old tree. Oh, and if you're security-minded, there's another step you'll want to do when copying things out of Windows.old - let me know if you go this route and are interested.

Clean install is the recommended choice and is your only one if you are coming from XP. Backing up before the upgrade is essential regardless of your choice.

[Super Spy]

I can only say that I just bought a new PC with windows 7 on it and so far like it way better than Vista. Good luck with the install. Definately backup everything prior to doing anything.

[tango5]

Yeah i am running Vista right now, i do have a Seagate 320gb external hard drive that backs up every night. I just didnt know if it would wipe out or lose anything.

[CSDGuy]

Something I did when I upgraded from Vista was to uninstall iTunes, disable all non-MS programs/start-up items (requires a reboot prior to the actual upgrade) via msconfig, and disabled my antivirus program until the upgrade was complete.

Also, make sure you run the Win7 upgrade advisor... it'll tell you if there are any glaring issues.

This put my computer in as close to safe mode as I could be without actually being in Safe Mode. In my case, the upgrade took about an hour. After the upgrade, I simply re-enabled the stuff I'd disabled, and all worked fine. Windows 7 runs pretty nicely on my machine.

Backing up is a good thing. I'm just glad I didn't have to restore from backup...

[Blackhawk556]

ok the amount of info you are giving us is too little. what version of vista are you using? home premium? business? 32bit or 64bit?
what version of windows 7 are you installing 32 or 64bit?

all of these things matter and like mention earlier, run the upgrade advisor and backup your stuff.

its usually best to do a clean install but please remember that your programs will have to be installed again. I've moved 6 computers to windows 7 in the last 5 months and all were "clean" installed.

let me know if you need more info.
I'm sure others on calguns are much smarter than I am, but I know some stuff also

please stop using vista and move to 7 ASAP