If I upgrade to W10 from W7, will I have to reinstall all my apps? I believe I had to do this going from XP to Vista or perhaps Vista to W7.
I have been reading several reviews and visited many Microsoft sites about W10 but they all talk about features, pricing, and availability–but not the actual installation process.
Most in-place upgrades aim to put new underpinnings on the overall installation. When those fail or the installer detects a problem, it will offer the “new install” option. IIRC, Vista did this and offered first to update the system to the new OS, then to create a new parallel (separate boot) installation, and then a bare-metal new installation.
Updates of an OS are always problematic and by far the most negative experiences with Vista were people who tried to upgrade old, creaky, muddled systems the installer couldn’t handle. I started with a brand new system for Vista and had few problems, except those up at the usability and UI level.
I think MS and the rest of us looking forward to Win 10 are hoping that the Win7-8-10 path is linear enough and with enough family similarity that it will go smoothly, and replace the OS under the vast majority of major apps without breaking anything. If you have a lot of lower-tier and small-maker apps, you might want to look at reinstalls of those just to make sure. But under MS Office, Adobe, etc.? I think it’s reasonable to expect success close to that of a clean build.
I did an in-place upgrade from Win7 to Technical Preview Win10 several months ago and all my apps were functional.
It retained all settings for various programs, user accounts, even the bookmarks and extensions/add-ons in the 3 major browsers.
YMMV.
ETA: I don’t have any legacy programs. Everything I have is less than 3 years old.
Thanks, that is very helpful. I’m not looking for guarantees that everything will work–I am wondering about the mechanics of the install. When I upgraded to Vista, it was *required *that everything be reinstalled. Period. That was the definition of the upgrade path. If W10 at least attempts an in situ upgrade I have a chance that most things will still work. I don’t mind reinstalling a couple here and there that hiccup as long as the OS meets me at least halfway.
What did you upgrade from? There were two paths. I believe Vista would do a straight upgrade from XP, but not from Win 98 - or maybe it was a straight upgrade from the NT-series OSes (WinNT, Win2K) but not from XP.
Windows 7-8-10 form a very linear family, without the discontinuities of Win 3/WinNT dichotomy, and MS’s presentation, and most of the experiences I’ve seen so far, like CF’s, have been that it’s more like a major update to Win7 than a complete changeover to a new file structure, system management and kernel like Vista was.
ETA: I hope so, anyway. I like Win7 a lot but it’s showing it’s age, and I have the file-search breakage on my main workstation that nothing has fixed. I was looking at a complete Win7 rebuild, but I’ll hold out for a Win10 upgrade first.
The main cause for a fresh install is going from 32-bit to 64-bit OS.
Also, jumping certain generations might require this. E.g., from XP to 7. (But I have done upgrades from XP to 7 using a kludge.)
Dear gawd. :eek:
Why oh why are people so interested is taking on a major operating system on the day of release?
You know it is going to end in tears and several service packs before it’s reliable and stable!
I have been an early adopter of most of the major OS changes, but I’ve always done it pretty cautiously, on a secondary or new computer build. Haven’t had many problems because I didn’t try to do an in-place upgrade or use substandard hardware (even if Unca Bill said it would work just fine).
I may wait a week to install Win 10, just to make sure, but something about both the official and community discussion of it gives me confidence that it’s a good move and will be positive for most users. That’s not something I say lightly about MS, especially given the last few years of fumbles. Call it a hunch.
When I did the in-place upgrade from Win7 to the Technical Preview Win10 over WIFI it took about 2-2.5 hours. Everything installed on my Win7 laptop (Compaq CQ56) transferred over without flaw. I was fully prepared to re-format and install LINUX, but I am happy with the results, so I am staying with Win10 although I do have a partition reserved for LINUX on this laptop. 
So… Windows 10 should migrate everything that is certified compatible. All of your apps/software providers have been running around like cockroaches when the light turns on trying to make sure they meet that standard. The big stuff will probably make it. The little stuff, don’t count on it.
Microsoft may or may not provide ways for non-compatible software to migrate, but will not install it for you. You would need to wait until there’s a version that works with 10, then install, but your licensing info will be there. Sounding like fun yet?
If you don’t need to do it right away, I would recommend waiting and letting some other folks work the kinks out. This will also give more software providers time to reach compatibility.
Psst. No one noticed 'til you did that. 
But… new toy!
Right now… well, never mind. But I just had a howl about this with another Doper, so the error is egregiouser than it might seem.
I blame Nutella.
Windows was nearly completely rewritten going from XP to Vista, same as it was going from 9x to XP. Vista to 7 to 8.1 however were all much more similar, as is 10.
Nutella?! :dubious:
It’s making the apostrophe key sticky. 
As I posted elsewhere (MPSIMP) I did the upgrade yesterday, upgrading a Surface Pro at the Microsoft upgrade fair. As far as I can tell, only one app didn’t make it: the free solitaire suite of games that I had downloaded the previous day disappeared. But my applications: Mozilla, TakeCommand, my editor Kedit and the enormous TeX suite all seemed to be fine.
Unfortunately the battery didn’t seem to survive although there is still some thought it might just be a software problem. We will try to find out tomorrow. I still ought to be under warranty. It is not clear whether this had anything to do with the upgrade since I usually operate it plugged in.
Sure. It’s the sole cause of the decay of Western civilization. I thought everyone knew that. :rolleyes: