Upgrade or clean install?
Posted on 26. Nov, 2008 by Mike Halsey in guides and how to's
When you come to install a newer version of Windows on your PC, or you have to reinstall the copy your have you have two options. Upgrade and Clean Install. So which one’s best and which should you choose? There are several things to consider when making this choice.
Clean Install
Windows XP will take about 40 minutes to install from clean and Windows Vista, depending of your system, will take between 20 and 45 minutes. This isn’t too arduous and won’t tie up your machine for too long. You will need to spend additional time though installing any hardware that Windows hasn’t found, printers and scanners are common here, and any and all additional software you use.
If you use things like web-based email and don’t generall have much software installed then this isn’t so much of a problem. Have a think however about what other software you will or might need. Anti Virus, Firewall, Anti Spyware, Office Suite, iTunes. It can take some time to install and update this lot, then you have to import all your music back into iTunes or Windows Media Player and configure all the fiddly settings in Windows you had changed.
There are definite benefits to performing a clean install though and it’s always the one that I would recommend. You’re getting a completely fresh copy of Windows and your software sans any problems and your system will be faster and speedier than an upgraded copy of Windows because you’ve not got any orphaned entires in your registry slowing the machine down.
Upgrade
There are two simple reasons why I wouldn’t recommend an upgrade. Firstly is, as I’ve said before, any problems you’ve had previously that are caused by old file and software remnants hanging around will still be there. So if you’re system’s been slow it might still remain slow after the upgrade.
The other reason is the time it takes. Where a clean install of Windows Vista can be done in as little as 20 minutes, an upgrade can take as long as two hours to do the same job.
The choice?
So which is the best to choose? At the end of the day the choice has to be up to you. In the Backups series I wrote about how to back up your complete Windows installation. If you can do a clean install, get all your software and settings as you want them and then completely back up your system, this is definitey preferable. The next time you need to reinstall Windows you can simply restore from the backup.
If you’re running Windows XP and want to upgrade to Vista, or when the time coes to install Windows 7, then which is best for you? If you have lots of hardware and software installed and your PC is runnng relatively well then I’d plump for the upgrade, but if you don’t mind putting in a bit more work and can back everything up afterwards then it’s a clean install every time.
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