Vista to Windows 7 - Upgrading or clean installation?

Solution 1:

I performed a standard upgrade here at work (from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Business) and have had literally no issues. Admittedly, I did a lot of homework first, including running the compatibility advisor.

The other important facet of this is that the Vista build on my machine was a clean install. (The box shipped with 32-bit, I reformatted and installed 64. Naturally, my Windows 7 drop is also 64-bit.)

To give an indication of the level of application insanity on this machine, I'm a developer. Office 2007, SQL Server Express 2008, Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 (Team Edition for 2008, Pro for 2005), the SQL Client Tools, four different web browsers + IETester, and a plethora of lesser apps. None have had issues.

I'd say in the general case that, unless your machine is due for an enema anyway, go ahead and do the upgrade when going from Vista to 7. Smooth and painless.

Solution 2:

I always recommend a clean install. You may perform an upgrade and everything goes fine, but you might have problems. Take the safe approach and do a clean install. You'll fell beter. :)

Solution 3:

As long as you are going from x86 to x86 or x64 to x64, you should have no problem what so ever in doing an upgrade, I have heard from numerous people that it works without problems and even James O'Neil has said it's ok (A very cool bloke at Microsoft!)... I can't remember if this is the exact blog post, but he gave a talk on it a while ago.

Anyway, I personally would still do a fresh install - I am stubborn and prefer it, but there is nothing wrong with an upgrade.