Vista to 7 upgrade, clean viruses b4 upgrade?

[ckmckee]

I have a HP Touchsmart that is full of malware. I want to upgrade from Vista 64 bit to Windows 7 64 bit. Question is, will the upgrade wipe the hard drive thus getting rid of the viruses? Wondering if I need to clean viruses first. Thanks very much.

 

[WR2]

IQuestion is, will the upgrade wipe the hard drive thus getting rid of the viruses? Wondering if I need to clean viruses first. Thanks very much.

Hello ckmckee;
It depends on the type of malware and how it's installed. If it's hooked into the OS the OS upgrade (Vista-> Win7 could take care of it).
If the malware is hooked in with any programs you're using just the OS upgrade won't remove them from your system.
-> Definitely clean house before you upgrade.

You could also do a Win7 install to a new partition and not install directly over Vista in your current OS partition.
http://www.techspot.com/guides/143-dual-boot-windows7/

 

[bdcrlsn]

Just wondering why you haven't cleaned the viruses? There are several good free anti-virus programs available.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

do a clean install it;s always the best bet!

 

[w7pro]

Also, prior to doing a clean install, try and backup your non-infected data. Or at least the data that you'll need, as it will be gone once you complete the install.

-- Ryan
Windows Outreach Team

 

[pjmelect]

If you upgrade with viruses on your computer you run a risk of having the upgrade fail. You will then have the problem of recovering your data. Do as has been previously suggested of backing up your data and doing a clean install.

 

[ckmckee]

This pc had 310 infections in Malwarebytes quarantine, and many other problems. Rather than a virus-cleaning, looks like I will have to do a system recovery using the pre-made disks to get it clean. Is this what you mean when you say I need to do a clean install? I have never done an upgrade before.

So I would do a system recovery on Vista, then proceed with the Windows 7 upgrade? Please advise. Thanks very much.

 

[pjmelect]

I don’t know what Windows 7disk/ licence that you have, have you got the upgrade version? If so you will have to reinstall Vista using your recovery disks. Make sure that you back up your data before doing a Vista reinstall using your recovery disks as any data on the drive WILL be overwritten. It is better if possible to do a clean install of Windows 7 for many reasons not least is that it can take a very very long time to do an upgrade.

 

[WR2]

So I would do a system recovery on Vista, then proceed with the Windows 7 upgrade?

That way would certainly work. You might have some other options that could save you that step.
What size hard drive do you have and how much free space is on it? Any other hard drives in the system?

 

[Prescott_666]

Go to Paul Thurrott's Supersite for windows article called "Clean Install Windows 7 with Upgrade Media"

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/win7/clean-install-windows-7-with-upgrade-media.aspx

 

[ckmckee]

Prescott_666, I went to the website you mentioned and read it. The article is thorough and sounds like just what I need. I will attempt this Monday and will get back to you all on the results.

 

[ckmckee]

As suggested, I'm in process of doing a clean install of Windows 7 over my Vista virus ridden operating system. In process of formatting drive now, however 2 partitions are showing up. Does the HP Touchsmart IQ504 store restoration files on disk 0, partition 2? Do we need to format this also?

 

[ckmckee]

Forgot to add that the 2nd partition shows that of the 11 GB of space, only 1.5 GB is free. There is 10 GB of some kind of data on this partition. Seems like whats on there may be a restore or recovery partition????? Does anyone agree? If this is the case, then we should format the 2nd partiton as well in to avoid possible compatibility issues? Help!

 

[WR2]

the 2nd partition shows that of the 11 GB of space, only 1.5 GB is free.

Correct. That is your orignal Vista recovery partition. No need to do anything to that.
Work with the bigger partition.

 

[ckmckee]

Hi, I received an email from Tom's Hardware saying I have a new reply to this thread. I thought I had already selected your answer as the best (since it helped me the most) and this thread was closed. Here's what the email said:

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So I went into the thread and see no new replies, only what appears to be an advertisement added to the thread. Do you know why this happening? Or maybe I did not select the best answer and close the thread after all ???? I don't know if you are one of the higher level people on the site but I thought you might know, or be able to forward this to the Tom's Hardware Community Team. I do not know how.

If I'm getting emails just because an advertisement has been added to the thread, this seems wrong. Please, if you have the time and ability, help me figure out how to forward this to the Tom's Team. Thanks again for your help.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Go to Paul Thurrott's Supersite for windows article called "Clean Install Windows 7 with Upgrade Media"

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/win7/clean-install-windows-7-with-upgrade-media.aspx

 

[ckmckee]

Best answer selected by ckmckee.