To Wipe Completely, or Partially?

wipe completely!

pwalpwal
wipe completely!

My Mom taught me that too.
 

I knew it ... dang ...
 
Okay ... I'm goin' in ... send rescue squad if I'm NOT heard from in two weeks time ... It's gonna get messy.

mudgel
I've done one upgrade and one fresh install. Can't tell the difference in performance between them.

ditto, i done 3 in place installs and 2 fresh installs, they all work like clockwork, can't tell the difference, but there is a difference, i save myself literally about a week on each daw pc with the amount of software and plugins and set up required by doing the in place upgrades, if i had the choice again i would do the same thing, saves so much time and effort and everything just kept running like a dream. of course everything was backed up with acronis ti  2017 just incase, but there was no need.

musicroom
I know for the OS purist - my approach would keep them awake at night chanting random cuss words.

 
Yeah, that's me.  I probably won't sleep tonight now that I know this.  :)
 
On a serious note, upgrades work for most people.  I happen to enjoy the process of rebuilding things, reinstalling, etc.  It's kind of fun to me, but I know I'm probably an outlier.
 
 
 
 

I imaged my HD then upgraded Win 7 Pro to Win 10 Pro with no problems.  Everything ran perfectly and I lost nothing.  YMMV

This is great info. What I think I will do since I see many varying results from you guys, is, obviously back stuff up like mad ... then do an overwrite install. Test it all out. If something smells funny, I can always do the full wipe method. Enough of you are saying the overwrite install worked that I am now curious. I don't have a complicated system. Just a dedicated laptop that only has cakewalk stuff and my plugins. It also has low overall mileage and degradation at this point. Still fairly fresh all around.
 
The fresh hard drive for the new OS seems cool, but I have a laptop ... so that adds some complexity to that idea. You'd have to get in there and pull the old one out. Probably not gonna be plug and play either like you would have on a desktop? I don't know ... I never really cracked it open before.

Very cool info ... but that link seems to be for individuals that use assistive technologies. It does say they are not restricting it to any specific type ... but I'm not sure I feel comfortable doing that. Have you tried upgrading that way?
 
I also wonder, is it a special version of Win10?

scottcmusic
Very cool info ... but that link seems to be for individuals that use assistive technologies. It does say they are not restricting it to any specific type ... but I'm not sure I feel comfortable doing that. Have you tried upgrading that way?
 
I also wonder, is it a special version of Win10?

Yes I have done 4 computers already.
And it is really Win10.
It is from MS, don't you see it?
dan

That free Windows 10 upgrade is ligit and as easy as pie. I did it and with out guilt. It said right on the Microsnoft user forums that they still wanted to leave the free door open for a little longer and this is the door. 
 
 I had done 3 computer by the deadline for free. I was given a nice i7 HP computer in the fall and it had not been upgraded . I wanted to wipe it and put in a SSD and the W7 OS was in one of those back up partitions and if you wanted it from HP it cost $50 for the stupid disk. So I thought I might as well buy W10.
When trying to purchase it from MS web site there is a tab saying " get it free" so there you go. That works for me. 
 
You need to first download the OS ISO file and burn it to a DVD. The direct down load installer is buggy and stalls at 99.8%.  I did it 3x and everyone said don't use it.    
Once you've installed it and the computer is fully functioning you activate it using the "chat" option. 
The MS agent will ask for remote access and you will need your legit W7 serial #. 
They go on your machine and activate it and that's it. 
They did ask me if I use accessibility features and I said Yes which is true because I use the magnifier. 
Don't feel guilty. Every computer has a paid licence so MS got the money already from that. 
You would not be able to do the free upgrade with a pirated copy or a fresh build. 

I shall give it a try. Thanks.

Overall Win 10 seems like a better performer to me than Win 7 or 8, although maybe just a bit larger on the memory footprint.  I would say at least 8 GB minimum to run 10 comfortably.
 
Win 10 seems setup to do a bit of housekeeping after booting up, and here is where I see the biggest difference in two systems where I run Win 10.  One has SSD and I have turned off the superfetch and search indexing.  It is ready to go right after the desktop loads.
 
But on my laptop with a conventional HDD, the disk goes to 100% for a few minutes after booting up.  Once it settles down, it runs fine.  Anything checking for updates may slow this down a little as well.
 
Looking at Task Manager, Windows runs some optimization routines under Service Host: Local system, related to superfetch, etc., where it scans the drive a bit before it get things all settled in.  I just let it run till it's ready to go, so things will run fine afterwards.  That would be the best reason to upgrade this device to SSD, but tearing the keyboard out to get to to the drive makes it a little less important.
 
As far as AV goes, I think if you run Windows today that you definitely need an AV.  Even if you occasionally go online or connect a USB drive, there are just too many malware exploits out there now.  Unless you back up your system daily and keep the backups offline (which you should do on occasion anyway), why take the chance?
 
I run Avira on both my Win 10 systems without any issues.  Avira Free is light and has the same AV engine and cloud protection as the Pro version.  The only thing Pro adds is optional web and mail protection, and comes with support.  Avira gets top scores on many 3rd party tests.  It's probably going to be better than Defender, but I have heard that Defender has improved some lately.  In any case you can just open the GUI to switch real-time scanning on/off if you prefer not to have it running in the background.  Then just scan on-demand as needed.  If you open a web browser or plan to download anything switch real-time on.

jpetersen
 
Buy a new PC.
Only then will you benefit from faster hardware made for Win10.

That's what they said about Vista.  And it was probably true!
 
But any computer hardware made in the last 3 years or so should run Win10 just fine.  I have no problem with my Ivy Bridge 3rd gen Intel Core setup, running Win10 without skipping a beat, plus it boots in about 10-15 seconds!