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What is left behind with a Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade? (Windows.old)?

What is left behind with a Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade? (Windows.old)?

My understanding is to use Windows 7 upgrade media you must install and activate Windows Vista or Windows XP. In the case of upgrading from Windows XP a "clean install" is performed, but in reading about this, it sounds like this may just be overwriting the Windows XP installation, as it talks about the old Windows being moved to a Windows.old folder. It sounds like the same kind of thing you get when you install Windows over itself, which if you are familiar with that you know it leaves all kinds of junk from the previous installation.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 356
Total answers/comments: 2
Guest [Entry]

"It doesn't overwrite anything. The complete contents of your installation drive are moved to the Windows.old folder, despite the name. So you have a tree which looks approximately like this:

C:
+--Users
| +--Me
+--Program Files
+--Windows
+--Windows.old
+--Documents and Settings
+--Program Files
+--Windows

So your installation is as clean as it can get, but you still have everything you had on that partition before lying around in Windows.old. If you don't need that anymore (and who needs XP when installing Win 7 :-)) you can simply format the partition or delete and re-create it."
Guest [Entry]

"Junk is left when you install without erasing hard drive. All Windows components will be new, but there will be leftovers of old OS everywhere on hard drive. Windows 7 will function as new (except for fragmentation issues).

To get truly clean installation, just hit format on disk selection menu during Windows 7 setup."