Clean install of Win10

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by Brian K, Sep 4, 2015.

  1. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    I'll be interested to hear your experiences.

    My Win8.1 was running fine and after the upgrade to Win10 the OS continued to run fine. Same "speed" as before the upgrade. Win10 was installed to another partition on the SSD and multi-booted with BIBM. The clean Win10 booted a few seconds faster than the upgraded Win10 so I thought I'd try building it to resemble my upgraded Win10. Drivers were installed as well as a few apps. Now the few seconds boot time advantage was gone and the OS felt just like the upgraded Win10. Both are fine. So I've stopped installing apps into the clean Win10 as I can't see an advantage. I'll continue to use the upgraded Win10.
     
  2. Krusty

    Krusty Registered Member

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    Brian,

    You may remember my upgrades seemed to slow my machines, both of which had HDDs. My fresh installation on my new SSD was quite quick as expected but things [boot / reboot] seem to of slowed a bit now, or maybe I'm just used to the speed now. Scanning with Norton, MBAM and HMP is still incredibly quick compared to the upgrade but that could be because there is much less to scan.

    - Dave
     
  3. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    Brian,

    The recommendation for always clean installing a new OS is not for boot speed or operating speed. A clean install is recommended because so many things can go wrong with an OS upgrade, software incompatibilities, driver incompatibilities, unwanted garbage left behind, especially in the Windows registry, etc. If you never had a problem with an upgrade then you are one of the lucky ones.

    I am sure that if Microsoft had its way, they would recommend everybody to clean install a new OS, but Microsoft knows that clean install is not a practical option for a vast majority of its users, as they just do not have the technical capabilities to do a clean install. This is the reason they have an option for an OS upgrade, but no matter how much they test their upgrade option before releasing it to public, they still will not be able to guarantee that an upgrade will go smoothly for every single system out of the tens of millions of unique systems out there.

    I always to a clean install of a new OS and this is what I always recommend. In fact, I recommend that people do a format and clean reinstall of their OS at least once a year.
     
  4. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    I always prefer doing upgrades over clean installs. I really don't care if doing a clean install is the better option, I prefer not to have to reinstall the applications I use. For the same reason.

    On the primary laptop I use, which I upgraded from Windows 7, Windows 10 is running fine after upgarding from a Windows install with a number of programs installed, and has continued to work fine and run fast after installing many more. I don't plan on ever doing a clean install of Windows on this computer.

    I'm going to do an upgrade on an older laptop, with an old of install of Windows 7 on which I have many program installed, and on which I have installed (and uninstalled) hundreds of programs over the last few years, to see how well upgrade works. I just have to buy a new hard drive first, as the hard drive is damaged.
     
  5. Infected

    Infected Registered Member

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    For me, a clean install just runs better. It runs smoother without the hiccups.
     
  6. crofttk

    crofttk Registered Member

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    The irony of this is that there seem to be a significant number of people out there who've had sooo many problems with free upgrade through WIndows Update that they've gone the Media Creation Tool/ ISO route and have either downloaded the wrong edition/version/bitness OR mistakenly tried to go straight to clean install OR both and they're tearing their hair out because they can't complete the install or can't get a seemingly successful install to activate - and the activation issue could, in some cases where they sequenced things properly, be merely be because people don't realize they shouldn't enter a product key for clean install (using skip or next step) and don't understand that their activation (by free upgrade means) is now tied to the hardware hash of their machine on the MS activation servers (which don't appear to be totally up to the task at the moment, further confusing and alarming people).
     
  7. Krusty

    Krusty Registered Member

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    Don't you have to upgrade first to activate Win10 on the machine before doing a clean installation?
     
  8. WildByDesign

    WildByDesign Registered Member

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    Technically, yes. But there are ways around that now.
     
  9. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    You can choose not to keep anything when you do the upgrade, which essentially is a clean install.
     
  10. Kerodo

    Kerodo Registered Member

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    Yes... that's how it works.

    I did an upgrade from 7 to 10, and it was not a very good experience. This is the only time I've upgraded in 20 years or so of using Win. It went badly...

    As soon as I did the subsequent clean install from ISO, everything was great, fast again, no issues or problems, clean and good.

    I've always gone with clean installs, they can't be beat.
     
  11. crofttk

    crofttk Registered Member

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    Which are not for the technically disinclined, and would probably get the people I'm talking about in worse trouble than they would have had otherwise.
    One man's "essentially is" is another man's "is not quite the same as". Does the upgrade give you the option to delete all partitions while executing it?

    Honestly, I have seen some people explain how they just jumped into a clean install with both feet, not even having made a disk image before hand, much less realizing they needed to back up their user data they wanted kept and round up their 3rd party license keys and install files beforehand.
     
  12. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    @crofttk There is no option to delete partitions.
     
  13. zfactor

    zfactor Registered Member

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    actually is super easy to install win 10 clean without upgrading first and retain activation. brian many times it does take the os some time to settle in as some like to say and boot times can get a bit faster also i have seen where a driver or other could cause a difference etc i find a clean install is faster overall almost every time.
     
  14. Krusty

    Krusty Registered Member

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    Guys,
    Is doing a Reset from within Win10 the same as doing a clean installation? I mean compared to booting to an ISO DVD and deleting partitions and installing fresh.
    I haven't found a great deal of info about the Reset feature.
    Thanks.
     
  15. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    The Win8.1 to Win10 was the first upgrade I've performed, apart from the Technical preview upgrades. Win8 and earlier OS were clean installs. Microsoft has perfected the upgrade process with Win10. Not a hitch with any of mine. I've compared my upgrade against several clean Win10 installs on this same drive and there is no reason for me to use a clean install as the upgrade performs as well as the clean install and is ready to go in less than 20 minutes (from the start of the upgrade) as opposed to days of setting up software and tweaking a clean install of Win10.

    One of my interests is partitioning, multi-booting and imaging. Over the years I've used the operating system that was first installed and I've never formatted and reinstalled an OS. That's not to say I haven't installed the same OS on other partitions on the same drive and compared the performance of the two OS. As I've not noticed any performance difference I've continued to use the established OS. Even after using WinXP for almost 10 years it was performing as well as a fresh install. My almost 3 years old Win8.1 performed as well as a fresh install so why would I change to a fresh install? Change would mean a lot of work for no gain.

    Why don't my OS slow down with time? I think it's due to fixing issues as they arise and this often means restoring images to a time before the issue happened. I've restored LOTS of images.

    Well, that's my view. I had every intention of using a clean Win10 install until I found how smoothly the upgrade was performing.
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2015
  16. emmjay

    emmjay Registered Member

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    I have done five W8-W10 upgrades and two W7-W10 upgrades for friends and family. None of these were clean installs as the owners wanted it that way. The W7-W10 had more challenges before and after the upgrade. One of them I went back later and chose a clean install because it was sluggish running W10 after the upgrade - it did improve after the clean install but once the original apps were re-installed it got sluggish again. Vendors that have stated their products are W10 ready - I have my doubts. This laptop is now back on W7.

    I have two W7 systems of my own - for one of them I reserved the upgrade and the other I did not. When the reserved upgrade downloaded from WU it failed continuously and I eventually cancelled it and used the Media creation ISO - did a clean install , no drama. Decided it was best to do a clean install on a 2010 vintage laptop.

    Years back I upgraded a Vista/32 Business system to W7/64 so this had to be a clean install. I had no issues with this upgrade, however it was very time consuming. Licensing was done differently then - the W7 license had to be entered to activate the system. MS sees it as a genuine W7 retail license. The system hardware qualifies for W10, but as I upgraded it from Vista to W7, even though it was a clean install, I am concerned that it is internally different from a full W7 installation. I think I would have to use the ISO creation tool clean install on this system for W10 to work properly. I'd really like to know what others think about this.
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2015
  17. Carver

    Carver Registered Member

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    I was going to install Window 10 from an ISO but decided to wait for the download of Windows 10, the download went very fast there is a point where you get a BSOD or something and have to wait for 10 minutes till it resolves itself well that didn't happen, so I basically just sat in a chair looking at the screen. I basically haven't had any problems since and it has been over a month. So no need of a clean install.
     
  18. crofttk

    crofttk Registered Member

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    Indeed. I wish I had been aware of gatherosstate back on 1 Aug.

    For one laptop, I brought it from Win 7 Home Premium through a free Win 8 Pro upgrade first, updated to Win 8.1 Pro, then upgraded to Win 10 Pro. All went without a hitch and that one's humming along with no problems. It'll stay as is unless there are problems. For that user, I'll restore it (from a disk image) to Win 7 if she decides that's what she prefers.

    For my laptop at Win 8.1 Home, I had a little scare:

    I had purchased a new Dell laptop in mid-June that came with a 1 TB HDD. At the same time, I got a Samsung 850 EVO, 500 GB, and a USB3 Sata3 drive enclosure. I swapped the HDD and SSD using Dell Backup and Recovery - that went without a hitch. The HDD was kicked to the enclosure to use as a portable backup drive.

    After that, I successfully upgraded my laptop through Windows Update to Win 10 Home which activated successfully. Since it was early on in configuring and installing programs on this laptop, I decided to do a clean install - just to basically get rid of the Dell "extras" and to see if there was a difference in the clean OS versus the incremental OS on the other laptop (other than Pro versus Home).

    Because I thought it was the thing to do, I issued a clean command to my SSD - of course, now I know it was entirely unnecessary. Much to my dismay, when I rebooted to access BIOS and check my boot order before booting to the USB media for the clean install, I realized I couldn't get into BIOS. The damn black bar below the Dell logo would not fill in blue and neither F2 brought up BIOS nor F12 brought up UEFI boot manager - nothing, zippo, just frozen.:eek:

    It took me a couple of hours to finally arrive at removing the HDD from the enclosure, putting the SSD into the enclosure and then initializing the SSD from a port on the other laptop. Then I was able to take the SSD out of the enclosure and reinstall in my laptop and begin the clean install from the USB media. You DON'T want to hear about the ugly things I was trying with the laptop case open and the SSD in my hand before I arrived at what worked.

    I know how I ended up in that bind was stupid and amateurish (yes I am an amateur, at best only an "enthusiast") - what a roller coaster ride! In hindsight, even though I don't regret the clean install, it would have been nice to know I could have simply deleted my partitions as part of the clean install and, ultimately, that I wouldn't have had to go through the upgrade first, by using gatherosstate.

    EDIT: only a typo correction.
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2015
  19. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    crofttk,

    That sounds frightening. To satisfy my curiosity, how did you use this command? Was it "clean" in Diskpart or something else?
     
  20. crofttk

    crofttk Registered Member

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    Yes, from the diskpart prompt (may have been from one of the disgnostics boot selections,I doubt a prompt in live Windows). Thought I was being smart and could kick myself now. Yeah, it was frightening - fortunately a lesson that will stay with me.
     
  21. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Thanks. A mystery since I do that almost daily on my test computer which has a SSD for the OS. Diskpart "clean" zeroes the sectors in the first and last MiB of the drive. I've no idea why you couldn't get into the BIOS.

    I run "clean" from a WinPE prior to installing a new OS. GPT disks have a GUID Partition Table at both ends of the drive. Deleting partitions doesn't remove the Secondary GUID Partition Table at the end of the drive. Diskpart "clean" does.
     
  22. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    One should only attempt clean install if one has the basic understating of how the process works. I understand the problems and issues caused by the upgrade process, but MS had no choice, because they could not ask average home users to clean install and activate their systems using the method outlined by zfactor. They had to tell everyone to upgrade, as this process involved no computer knowledge on the part of the user and also this was the easiest way to for them to determine if the user had an activated Windows running and to upgrade them to their corresponding Win 10 version.
     
  23. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    I am with you on this one. This was the only time I had upgraded an OS and in this case I had no choice because of the free upgrade issue. But right after the upgrade and activation, I wiped my partition and performed a clean install of Windows 10. I have zero issues since then.

    Even in the Android world I had issues when I upgraded from Jelly Bean based Cyanongenmod to KitKat based Cyanongenmod. I had to do a clean install to resolve all the issues that made it impossible to use my phone.
     
  24. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    Doing something as comprehensive as upgrading or clean installing the entire OS without making an image of your current system is suicide in my opinion. Nowadays with free imaging utilities like Macrium, it does not make any sense to not make an image before tinkering with your system.
     
  25. crofttk

    crofttk Registered Member

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    My point exactly. Easiest for MS presumably, but you have people encountering problems with a not so seamlessly implemented upgrade, turning to google and forums to get around it, deciding to use MCT, and then applying the wrong version or mistakenly going straight to clean install, i.e., getting just a little (bit of dangerous) knowledge to overcome their problem and ending up with worse problems than they had before. That's what I call irony.
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2015
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