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Clean Install with VISTA upgrade

Autor brendon

Now I’m a big fan of doing clean installs when putting a new operating system (and even some service packs) on your computer. Over time your computer builds up a mountain of temp files, logs and other un-necessary information.  A clean install is a good way to remove all of this and generally speed up the responsiveness of your system.

DailyTech is running an article on how to perform a clean install when using the VISTA upgrade DVD. With the cost of Vista I see most families will need to buy upgrade licences just so that they can afford the software. I don’t however envy the poor uncle/ cousin/ family friend that have to help with a re-install of VISTA 12 months down the track. Images of my own experiences looking for that old copy of windows 3.11 Setup Disk 1 or Windows 95 CD still haunt me to this day.

While the method proposed by DailyTech is a bit ‘fiddley’ it will definitely be easier and more stable than doing an upgrade from XP. The other benefit is that once your VISTA upgrade key is activated you don’t need to go searching for your old CD keys again. :-)

The basic steps for doing the clean install are:

1. Boot of the Vista DVD and do a trial install by not entering the DVD key
2. Select the version of Vista you are licensed for and install the trial copy
3. Once the install is complete and windows has booted, run the setup from windows and run an upgrade. This time enter the upgrade DVD key.
4. Allow Vista to install over your trail version
5. Once the upgrade is complete delete the \windows.old\ folder.

Now I assume you need to upgrade from your current XP install once to begin with so that your key is activated and your XP key is invalidated.

Thanks again to DailyTech for the instructions.