Thinking of switching to vista..

[DomS]

So I'm thinking of installing Vista on my system. No real reason why...just seems all the cool kids are doing it. If I do will I have to format all of my old partitions? Also, how much memory does it take up? Right now I have XP on a partition of about 45 gigs.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

It's best that you reformat and have as much disk space on a partition. I believe Vista eats 15% of your drive for backup purposes.

 

[Jeff7181]

It's better to do a clean install... you'll have fewer problems than if you do an in-place upgrade.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

You only need to format the Windows partition though, no reason to format the whole drive if it is partitioned. If you have any installed programs on other drives (bad idea in any case) then some of them will not function without a reinstall.

 

[13Gigatons]

I have it installed on a 40 gig partition and it's only using 20gigs and that includes dozens of apps like Office 2007 and Photoshop.

You might want to turn off system restore though because it tends to grow. You can also set limits for it as well though. I use Acronis as a backup solution so I find I don't need System restore.

 

[dderolph]

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer
You only need to format the Windows partition though, no reason to format the whole drive if it is partitioned. If you have any installed programs on other drives (bad idea in any case) then some of them will not function without a reinstall.

Well, if he formats the Windows partition, he'll most likely have to reinstall all programs, whether they were originally installed on the OS partiton or another partition.

By the way, I disagree that installing programs on other partitions, if that's what you mean by "drives", is a "bad idea in any case". If an OS parititon is getting cramped for space, installing programs on a different partition will work fine, for most applications.

 

[corkyg]

I would first run Microsoft's Vista compatibility download to see if your machine is Vista capable.

If so, then I would just get a new HDD and install it there, keeping the old XP as your back up ace-in-the-hole.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: corkyg
I would first run Microsoft's Vista compatibility download to see if your machine is Vista capable.

..This is the difference between loving your Vista experience vs becoming one of those 'gripe at MS because you blame them for something stupid you did' thread posters that we see so much.

😀

 

[Griffinhart]

If you do decide to go Vista, I definitely recommend doing a fresh install. While the in place upgrades do work, I've ended up revisiting and doing fresh installs on every machine I did an in place upgrade on to improve performance.