Of course it is. but many people don't know that, and they're popping up all over the place asking how they can recover their data. MS mitigated this somewhat by providing a 30-day rollback mechanism but that was not enough for some people - the damage had already been done. None of this impacted me, other than my little waste of 2-3 hours on a Saturday night described in post # 18 - actually not a waste since I learned a lesson. I certainly wouldn't have taken it on without having full disk images of 3 varieties of both laptops but there really are people without a clue and a limit to their patience. I want to say you merely have to RTFM but sometimes the right manual is hard to locate for some folks.
Here are two articles that I thought applied to the discussion. Both articles are dated but still relevant. 1) Windows 7: Clean Install vs. Upgrades The author considers upgrades a really bad idea because: 2) HTG Explains: Why You Should Perform Clean Installs, Not Upgrades For Linux Distro upgrades the author states:
@Raza0007 I agree that a clean install is the best option, but it's not something I would ever do on my own computers.
A month ago I would have agreed but Microsoft have nailed the Win10 upgrade process. With respect and tongue in cheek, I think a clean install is for masochists. An upgrade takes less than 20 minutes. Longer on "slow" hardware.
I recently switched from a Logitech membrane Di Novo keyboard and Mx Revolution mouse to a Corsair k95 RGB Mechanical keyboard and a k65 RGB Mouse. When I uninstall a program for example setpoint software for a Logitech keyboard and Mouse, after the uninstall I pull-up regedit and do a search on Logitech and delete all Logitech entrees as I have no other Logitech hardware or software. I think of it as just housekeeping. But it is one reason why people do clean installs.
Well if upgrades work for you then stick with it. My opinions about clean installation of a new OS are slightly biased because as I mentioned before, I do a clean install of my OS at least once a year, sometimes twice a year, and I like the small OS footprint and boost in responsiveness that I get from a clean install, not to mention cleaning out all the garbage that has built up with time. For example, I am currently running a Windows 7 system that I clean installed this January and in 7-8 months of use my \Windows\Installer folder has grown to over 7 GB! And this is after cleaning out all the temp installer files. In one year my Installer folder gets over 12 GB in size and this is just one folder, the \Windows\winsxs folder also keeps ballooning in size, though not as dramatically. I image my OS partition regularly and the resulting image size keeps on ballooning too. I find a fresh clean start once a year keeps my OS partition footprint manageable and my system trouble free. Therefore I consider a new OS a chance for a new fresh start.
In my case, in more than 2.5 years, from January 2013 to August 2015, image sizes of a Windows 7 installation partition have increased from 14.9 GB to 20.8 GB. That is, 5.9 GB or about 40%. Part of this increase is due to the ever-increasing size of software packages, not to the size of the Windows files.
I agree, a clean install is always superior. Judging by what I've heard online about all the 10 upgrades, a lot of people couldn't even get off the ground with the upgrade. There is nothing quite like a clean install of a brand new OS. I did that with Win 7, and it was fantastic. Now again with 10, and it's great. In my experience, upgrades are usually full of problems and the least desirable way to go.
We were having a discussion on the merits of clean install vs upgrade and I touched upon the size of my "Windows\Installer" folder and how it has managed to grow to 7 GB in just over 7 months (which seemed strange when compared to Robin A's experience). Well, today I found the reason why. My Installer folder was 6.89 GB to be precise and today I had the need to uninstall Microsoft Office Professional Pro 2013 that was on my system, and I was shocked to find that my Windows\Installer folder went from 6.89 GB to only 1.93 GB in size, by just uninstalling MS Office! The free space left on my C:\ partition went from 15 GB of free space to 23 GB of free space! So, it was MS Office and its regular monthly updates that were hogging about 8 GBs on my computer by themselves! Just incredible! So if anybody is concerned about why every month their Windows\Installer folder increases by about 700-800 MB, should check if they have MS Office installed on their systems.
