BF2S Forums Removing OS help

no, not if both installations have finished. i'm surprised that it did - normally, win 7 would want to install into a separate directory from any previous OS install . . .

...Use partition software to 'delete' the old drive, then extend 7 onto it?

TheEternalPessimist wrote:

Win7 wont ask you to format,

ah, that's right - i did a dual boot with XP, and installed on a seperate drive. thanks

It depends what option is chosen during setup, if you do an upgrade install it'll try to retain as many installed programs as it can (no idea how successful this is with Win7, I always do clean installs). 

If you do a fresh install it just bundles your current OS into a folder (just in case you forget to back something up) and continues to install from scratch, obviously this method removes all old programs and even though the files for these programs are in the windows.old folder they wont work, it's purpose is just for rescuing files from your previous installs.

EDIT: I would say upgrade installs from past experience (not with Win7 I'll admit) usually end up being messy to say the least, you get a lot of broken programs you then need to manually remove and basically the whole thing is a waste of space, I always got for a clean install and just reinstall what I use regularly, adds a couple of hours of work but, it's always worth it.

Last edited by TheEternalPessimist (2010-03-19 14:17:48)

TheEternalPessimist wrote:

It depends what option is chosen during setup, if you do an upgrade install it'll try to retain as many installed programs as it can (no idea how successful this is with Win7, I always do clean installs). 

If you do a fresh install it just bundles your current OS into a folder (just in case you forget to back something up) and continues to install from scratch, obviously this method removes all old programs and even though the files for these programs are in the windows.old folder they wont work, it's purpose is just for rescuing files from your previous installs.

EDIT: I would say upgrade installs from past experience (not with Win7 I'll admit) usually end up being messy to say the least, you get a lot of broken programs you then need to manually remove and basically the whole thing is a waste of space, I always got for a clean install and just reinstall what I use regularly, adds a couple of hours of work but, it's always worth it.

Yeah but from what I can see at space remaing on the HD, it seems like everything installed under vista is still there
(unless win7 takes up a 150gb of space).

But anyways il just format the whole thing, then Im sure its all gone.


Thanks for all the replies, much appreciated.
(as always quality help)

Last edited by Dr.PhiL (2010-03-19 14:27:47)

TheEternalPessimist wrote:

Like I said you'll probably find your old Vista install still packed in there in the windows.old folder on the root of C:  If you don't need anything from it, just delete the folder, it's probably 90GB+ if you've got 150GB taken up with a new Win7 install, that should sort you out. 

Win7 installs can be hefty (nothing close to what yours is) mainly due to the winsxs folder but, that's useful so don't get rid of that one lol.

EDIT: Don't just reinstall Win7, then you'll have vista AND win7 packed in your windows.old folder and even more space taken up lol.

90GB+?

My install of Win7 Ultimate isn't even approaching that. In fact, my system disk hasn't got 90GB used on it and that's with OS, applications and several hefty games (Dragon Age, Empire TW, Crysis etc) on it.

Win7 installs are ~15GB.