You will have even more fun with your time if your “in-place” goes south. I have never and would never - ever - attempt an in-place upgrade. And trust me - you will have authorization issues - despite your belief that it will be smooth. I have seen many a VSTi and their auth go wonky when a new OS suddenly “shows up” unannounced.
Not to mention OS issues if something is out of wack. And finally all the crap that will be left over AFTER an in-place - which can old slow things down eventually or cause major problems if an app or instrument decides to call the wrong .dll - that just happens to be sitting in some obscure directory.
I too have at least a couple days worth of auths to do…but I have no problem wiping the machine every 6 or 8 months and starting minty fresh. It’s liberating to gut the machine.
But if image my drive and THEN try it, what do I have to lose?
Also, my DAW is ALSO my main home computer, and I have a LOT more program on there then just music ones. It will literally take me a month to reinstall everything.
Another option if you have enough disk space is to install a boot manager and then do a fresh install on the same system. Then gradually move over to the new install. My setup has 3 hard drives - system, projects, samples. So on my system disk I created a new partition and and installed Windows 7 there. I could then boot to either Vista or Windows 7. This allowed me to continue getting things done using Vista, then as time allowed I started getting Windows 7 up and running. I could see all my projects and samples from both Vista and Windows 7 as they are on separate HDs.
The software I used was BootIt NG. It allows you to do partition resizing/creation as well as the boot manager. Very powerful and cheap, but not the most intuitive software to use.
That being said, I am also looking at backup software right now. And although Windows 7 has its own backup software, it does not create images (and of course is totally useless if you are still on Vista).
Acronis has a trial (which I’m downloading right now). Don’t know the limitation of their trial.
Another option might be Image for Windows by terabyte unlimited (same guys that do BootIt NG). They have a fully functioning trial (30 days I believe) meaning you can create an image and restore within the 30 days. After the 30 days you would need a paid license to restore - so you could image your drive and then if all goes smooth - just hang onto the image.
Sure…an image would be fine…as long as it’s accurate and readable. For what it’s worth - after Acronis completely going downhill I now use Macrium Reflect…by far and away - one of the best 39 bucks I ever spent. It is a really really good piece of software…fast, accurate and reliable.
Let us know how it goes if you attempt the in-place.
If I’m running a dual-boot Vista 64 / Vista 32 bit system using a 3rd party boot manager (Terrabyte BootIt), will I have any issues installing Windows 7 to just the Vista 64 partition? Not exactly sure how I would even do this.
That’s what I did (I also run bootit NG) quite some time ago - so I don’t remember the details. Win 7 rewrites over as boot manager - if I recall. I had to do something with bootitng to get it back, but in the end it worked.