Comments on: You Shouldn’t Upgrade Operating Systems

By: Norbert Rehaut

Norbert Rehaut — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:55:19 +0000

Is there any problem with reinstalling your original Win XP Pro over the old OS? Then you have to download all the updates from Microsoft?

By: SantiagoV

SantiagoV — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:15:39 +0000

Every time I upgrade to a new OS I buy a new HDD (not a huge investment) and put the old disk as slave. Some software, thank God, admits being copied disk to disk and work flawlesly. The other software is either reinstalled or simply erased if found irrelevant. Afterwards I erased the old disk and use it for data.

By: Jase

Jase — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 10:32:54 +0000

I never bother with “upgrades” either. I own copies of all windows operating systems. as long as you have reliable backups of data you should be ok with formatting and have no need to simply upgrade.

By: Vertimyst™

Vertimyst™ — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:04:05 +0000

I’ve never had any upgrade problems with Ubuntu. Or any other Linux distro, for that matter – aside from the usual upgrade connection problems if I do it day-of-release (all goes fine if I wait, say, a week).

Regarding Windows – I’ve never upgraded a Windows install, as the only computers I’ve used since I’ve been old enough to know how to upgrade have been running XP, and I didn’t want to go near Vista. But these tips are great, especially the one about the spreadsheet. Even users who are just reformatting can benefit.

By: Sharron

Sharron — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:32:37 +0000

‘Sorry to hear that Stacey: For some reason I’ve never had any problems with SP3, and I’ve done quite a few SP3 installs. – Barring one when I installed the beta on one of my machines and the sound card crashed.

I don’t think, if I recall what I’ve read correctly, that it’s possible to upgrade from XP to Win 7: That 1 requires a fresh install anyway AFAIR.

But I fully agree with you: Upogrades are a nightmare. the only successful upgrade I ever did that went ahead without issue was XP Home to XP Pro.

Everything Rich mentioned – PLUS any malware hiding in your previous system will be there on your upgraded system too.

By: Stacey

Stacey — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:30:19 +0000

I actually ended up having to do a fresh XP install with SP3. At first it seemed the SP3 was working fine but somehow my ability to get the automatic updates from windows stopped working and no ammount of Windows Solutions would fix it other than a fresh XP install then getting the SP3 stright away.