Vista to Windows 7 upgrade question

dazberry

A Dell laptop that has winged itself to me a few times for fixing due to the Vista black screen of death issue looks like it's coming back to me again. All confidence has been lost in Vista (unsurprisingly) and they now want Windows 7.

It's got to the point that I was going to have to reinstall vista from scratch, the question I have for anyone who has done this before is that from a W7 upgrade CD (like this one) will I have to reinstall vista and then upgrade, or can I just remove vista and then install from the upgrade cd (perhaps having to reference the Vista licence key but not having to have vista completely installed again).

TIA

D.

bl8ckh8art

If your upgrading to windows 7 you would need to have vista installed. Then during the upgrade procedure, I imagine vista would be removed and replaced by windows 7.

_rebelkid

@dazzberry its actually a blue screen of death. I've got them before, but im mostly running linux. Ive got windows running too though :cool:

dazberry

_rebelkid wrote: »

@dazzberry its actually a blue screen of death. I've got them before, but im mostly running linux. Ive got windows running too though :cool:

Nope, there's also an issue called the black screen of death, vista will start but not display any log in screen, just a black screen and the mouse pointer.

D.

_rebelkid

dazberry wrote: »

Nope, there's also an issue called the black screen of death, vista will start but not display any log in screen, just a black screen and the mouse pointer.

D.

thats just windows being windows!! have you tried linux?

bl8ckh8art

If you're getting a black screen with mouse pointer only and windows loads up but not showing log on screen, are you able to click Ctrl, Alt & Delete to bring up the log on menu. You should get the log on window then.

Bigdeadlydave

With the upgrade cd you just turn your pc(with vista) on normally, log in, pop in the disk and run it. Thats it.

anto kerr

just pop in the disk all old files will be saved in a folder called windows.old for recovery later

Capt'n Midnight

dazberry wrote: »

Nope, there's also an issue called the black screen of death, vista will start but not display any log in screen, just a black screen and the mouse pointer.

D.

if that's all you see after POST then check that the correct partition is set active / is bootable

dazberry

Thanks lads.

The B(lack) screen of death seems to be a permissions issue that has occurred on the machine twice after specific windows updates. The machine boots to a point where you'd expect the login prompt but you only get a black screen and the mouse pointer. CTRL+ALT+DELETE has no effect. There's supposedly some work around using the "sticky key" function and holding SHIFT but I could never get it to work. In the end the only thing that worked was reseting all the NTFS permissions on the disk (by taking the disk out and putting it in another machine).

I would not be happy installing W7 over the current install as there are still issues with it related to the above. Best thing is probably a fresh install of Vista and then the W7 upgrade.

D.

Capt'n Midnight

110% there is no point in upgrading any OS that has problems.

Isn't there a way to do a clean install instead of an upgrade, you have to show it the disk at some stage ?

dazberry

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Isn't there a way to do a clean install instead of an upgrade, you have to show it the disk at some stage ?

That's what I'd love to know . I'll do a bit more research over the w/end and post back if I discover anything of interest!

D.

Likuid

Using an upgrade disk will keep the original drivers and (most) programs and upgrade the operating system, which would be Vista in your case. However as it's not a clean install, the system will still run a little slower than a clean install, as it still has parts of the old operating system.

The upgrade disk is certainly a cheaper option, but what most people don't know is that you can actually do a clean install from the upgrade disk. So it's cheaper and you have two ways of installing Windows 7.

With it being an OEM computer you might have some issues with drivers if you do a clean install, you may have to source some drivers yourself, on the other hand you might be able to get them from the Dell website.

If you do an upgrade, re-install Vista and then do the upgrade from a fresh installation as this will minimise the amount of problems.

dazberry

Likuid that's really helpful, thanks very much

D.

Likuid

No problem. Said I'd save you the time having to research it over the weekend.