Vista - If activated upgrade to Vista, what are recovery options?

"Scott" <geekboy@angrykeyboarder.comatose> wrote in message
news:9oh2t2t3dec9nruvp86eq626jjdcg28c0s@4ax.com...
> No. It's GONE.
>
> You need to do a backup if you want to preserve any previous data.
>
> Even if you do an upgrade, you STILL should back up your files first.
> You never know what might go wrong in the process.

Good. I was looking for a fresh start. Everything is backed up. I'll
report back with how it goes.

"Mickey Segal" <not_monitored@example.com> wrote in message
news:Ow9fPd4THHA.1200@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> "Scott" <geekboy@angrykeyboarder.comatose> wrote in message
> news:9oh2t2t3dec9nruvp86eq626jjdcg28c0s@4ax.com...
>> No. It's GONE.
>>
>> You need to do a backup if you want to preserve any previous data.
>>
>> Even if you do an upgrade, you STILL should back up your files first.
>> You never know what might go wrong in the process.
>
> Good. I was looking for a fresh start. Everything is backed up. I'll
> report back with how it goes.

The clean install went quite nicely. My Documents and Program Files had no
remnants of previous files, but several old folders in the root directory
remained with their contents apparently untouched (dell, drivers, i386,
temp, wutemp, and a folder I had created previously named oldprogs). I
don't know if these folders are important, but since they take only 1 GB I'm
in no rush to experiment.

I recovered 10-15 GB of space, not counting programs I haven't reinstalled.
The most important effect is that the computer is much faster now. Most of
the speed increase came as I prepared for the clean install, when I created
a new profile for myself and deleted the old profile. However, it was
significantly faster after the clean install, and I don't get any of the
long pauses doing routine operations.

During the clean install I was asked for my product key, and I just put in
the key I had used earlier from the upgrade box. Later I activated the
installation and the activation went through fine.

"Mickey Segal" <not_monitored@example.com> wrote in message
news:OekeEw%23THHA.1636@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> The clean install went quite nicely. My Documents and Program Files had
> no remnants of previous files, but several old folders in the root
> directory remained with their contents apparently untouched (dell,
> drivers, i386, temp, wutemp, and a folder I had created previously named
> oldprogs). I don't know if these folders are important, but since they
> take only 1 GB I'm in no rush to experiment.
>
> I recovered 10-15 GB of space, not counting programs I haven't
> reinstalled. The most important effect is that the computer is much faster
> now. Most of the speed increase came as I prepared for the clean install,
> when I created a new profile for myself and deleted the old profile.
> However, it was significantly faster after the clean install, and I don't
> get any of the long pauses doing routine operations.
>
> During the clean install I was asked for my product key, and I just put in
> the key I had used earlier from the upgrade box. Later I activated the
> installation and the activation went through fine.

I did have one problem preparing for a clean install after my Vista upgrade.
After deleting the CD writing program, my CD and DVD drives stopped working,
and an external CD/DVD drive was not recognized either. The problem sounds
similar to that described at
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;314060. I got the
drives working with some combination of uninstalling the drives in Device
Manager, scanning for hardware changes, rebooting and adding back the
drivers that were listed in Device Manager before I started deleting things.
(I'm not sure what action or combination was important, but the CD and DVD
drives were recognized again and I could do the clean install).

The take home message is to be careful about deleting CD / DVD writing
programs or AntiVirus programs, and go back to a backup point if necessary
if a problem occurs after deletion. If you are doing a clean upgrade, let
the upgrade get rid of these programs for you.