The latest news out of MS shows that Windows 8 Pro will be able to be Upgraded as Follows:

Microsoft writes that the types of files that can be transferred over vary based on your OS version:

You can transfer these…		When upgrading from…
	Windows 7	Windows Vista	Windows XP
Applications	x
Windows settings	x	x
User accounts and files	x	x	x

"The Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant will check to make sure your PC is ready for Windows 8. It will provide a detailed compatibility report that lets you know of anything you may have to address before or after the upgrade and outlines actions to take.

It will also inform you of any application or device compatibility issues. It will ask you what you want to keep from your current Windows installation. (See chart above) You will be able to upgrade from any consumer edition of Windows 7 to Windows 8 Pro and bring everything along which includes your Windows settings, personal files, and apps. If you are upgrading from Windows Vista, you will be able to bring along your Windows settings and personal files, and if you are upgrading from Windows XP you will only be able to bring along your personal files. Of course, if you want to start fresh, you can choose to bring nothing along. Or if you prefer to format your hard drive as part of your upgrade experience, you can do so as long as you boot from media and then format your hard drive from within the setup experience for installing Windows 8, not prior to it."

Always burn the ISO file to DVD. The DVD includes the Repair Console when needed. In my case I will be formatting the partition while I install Win 8 Pro. I believe this gives me a much cleaner OS. I do know that many of you reading this will not do this and will simply upgrade thus saving your files, apps, etc. Unfortunately those of you that have suspect installs to start with will have suspect installs of Win 8.

We Moderators and senior members of this Forum and any new members that wish to help answer questions will get very busy after Win 8 is released because there will be hundreds of people that do not follow these instructions and will install inappropriately.

The steps involved are pretty straight forward.
Buy Win 8. You will be sent an email with the key and with links to re-download the ISO file if you forget to burn it to DVD and a link to buy a DVD if you choose not to initially.

You will then be given the option to install now, Install from the desktop icon or Save Nothing.

Choose Save Nothing

You will then be given the option to save the ISO file to your PC and to burn the ISO file to either DVD or Flash Drive, Save it to somewhere on your PC and choose Burn to DVD.

When done, boot to the DVD and choose Custom Install

On the next screen click the Advanced Disk Options and highlight your partition and then choose format.

Once the format finishes start the installation.

Once installed have fun customizing and installing apps.

Ted's advice in bold red print is the way to do this & have the best chance of success the 1st time Windows 8 is installed. Data can always be saved to Flash drives, CD/DVD's or an external HDD for rapid restore to the proper folders. No need to try to preserve them through an Upgrade install.

In addition, those of us who created & logged on with a MS account will retain our IE favorites & some other items, such as installed themes. Those running alternative browsers, mainly Firefox & Chrome, also has a way to backup or sync bookmarks/other browser settings & extensions. When re-installing these browsers, make sure to know how to recover these things.

Also, I feel that this is as good as anytime to cover this topic, after Windows 8 is setup, create a Data partition for your items of importance. Either with your choice of partitioning software, or there is the option to type "Create and Format disk partitions" in the Control Panel, there will be the option for this. Give your self as much space as needed.

Finally, once Windows 8 is installed, updated & Activated (this includes Office 2007/2010 & the Media Center addon, if applicable), do a Full scan with Windows Defender, then your maintenance, which will include defrag of the OS & Data partitions.

Then, making sure that all of the above is done, prior to adding any other software, do a Full Disk Image with your backup software of choice. It is preferable to do this with a paid backup program, as in the Bootable Rescue CD, there will also be the option to Backup, as well as Restore. Backups can be done faster & more reliable this way, as the security & other running apps/Internet connection will be by-passed, & the Restore, when needed, is more likely to succeed.

However, I understand that some users cannot afford to have it all, the best 2 Free backup apps are Todo 4.5 & Macrium Reflect. Todo does file backup & disk imaging, Macrium does disk imaging only.

Whatever the situation, it's very critical to create this 1st backup while the computer is (or should be) in good working order. Because then, the user won't have to Reset or Refresh, there will be a fresh image on hand. Plus software activations won't have to be unnecessarily burned, as the apps will already be activated.

And Finally, before doing any of this, make sure to backup what's on the computer before doing anything. Because nothing is 100% guaranteed to work. It's critical to have that pre-install image, & if by chance the recovery disks for modern computers haven't been created, do that also. They may be needed in the future.

One last thing, if there's any question or doubt prior to proceeding with the install, stop & ask about any concerns. Don't worry about a lost hour or so, better an hour lost than a day or two, should the install be botched.

Best of Luck,
Cat

Awe shucks if I followed the above good advice I'd miss out on the fun of chasing things through dll hell and registry lane and back. Fortunately its harder for the software to foul up all on its own than it used to be...unfortunately the more security features that are added the more obstacles there are to tracking down and eliminating glitches IMHO. As it is I get to do serious troubleshooting every few days lol. I still find things that want to auto-update without telling me I purely hate that...the Scotty catches most of it but not all...

I don't like software to automatically update either, it can be a PITA to have to reboot while logged on to the Forum, or have other business to do. I don't mind a nag screen, but not auto updates. This was also a feature of Norton that I despised, some updates required a reboot to remain protected.

In fact, I have Windows/MS update to notify me of updates, instead of the auto one. The user is still notified, but can apply the updates at their choosing, at their choice of time, like while eating dinner or running errands.

johnwerneken, hope that you're just kidding about "missing out on the fun of chasing things". I take it that you are.

Cat

As I have said I will be burning the ISO file to DVD, and using that to format and clean install Win 8 Pro on our 2 laptops. I do not wish to spend time chasing problems. I want it to work the first time without problems. I wish to spend my time customizing the OS rather than chasing problems.

Of course I was mostly kidding as I agree with Ted's comment (below). But to the limited extent that I do know these OS's, it's cause of chasing issues for over 30 years lol

According to Computer World it might be possible to upgrade from Win 8 RP to Win 8 Pro. Not a good idea IMO, but just posting all possibilities.

Originally Posted by johnwerneken

Of course I was mostly kidding as I agree with Ted's comment (below). But to the limited extent that I do know these OS's, it's cause of chasing issues for over 30 years lol

I believe that there's some issues that we all chase, mainly keeping up with the very fast changes in technology.

12 years ago, one could expect things to stay the same for a couple of years, but not any more. It still amazes me that in the year 2000, 128MB RAM & 20GB HDD's were the norm, a couple of years later, it was 256MB RAM & 30GB HDD's. There for a while, things moved slow.

But around 2006, is when I began to notice that technology was moving at a faster than normal pace, & it's like in fast forward motion now. GB's are no longer the gold standard with HDD's, TB's are. 8GB RAM is now the "sweet spot" for dual channel RAM, in 2009, when Win 7 was released, 4GB was the sweet spot (these are assuming a 64 bit OS is installed). This spec doubled in 3 years.

I have a gut feeling that we're now in a never ending chase. Today's technology will be outdated in a year. At some point, DDR4 RAM has to be on the horizon, or is being worked on, hexacore CPU's capable of 5GHz w/o overclocking, as well as 5TB HDD's & 5GB DDR5 GPU's.

The paragraph above is the day that I'm chasing, & hopefully some of these will be in place in 2015, when I plan to buy a new desktop.

I get your point, computing is one huge chase indeed.

Cat

But what an enjoyable chase!

Yes, it is indeed! Were it not for the chase, I'd be sitting around with nothing to do. I really enjoy learning as much as I can about new technologies, & this includes new versions of Windows.

Cat