Yeah, but in all likelihood you've been keeping up with updates. If you'd kept using say, 10.4 Tiger, you wouldn't be able to upgrade to Yosemite without a full reinstall. It's the same issue here: Depending on which partition he overwrites, Bellhead will have varying degrees of success keeping his files.ticoun wrote:I know that's how upgrading OSX works, but I can't tell for Windows. Last time I used a Windows machine, it was to wipe its drive and install Linux Mint on it.Bellhead wrote:So I could either wait it out till the end of July for Windows 10, or acquire a copy of 7 or 8.1 elsewhere.
If I decide to install 7 or 8.1 on one of the spare 20 Gb boot partitions (I misremembered before, appologies), I'd have to choose between them. As of late, I've been leaning toward 8.1, which means I may or may not be coming back here for tech help if and when I manage to get it working.
Now: I've been told that it's possible to upgrade my OS without losing files/programs on the drive, ergo, without a format+reinstall, so one question remains: If I were to wait it out and go for 10, can I just install it over what's already there? Is that a thing that can be done?
Bellhead, if you're running Vista, you won't be able to upgrade to Windows 10 or 8.1 and still keep all our documents. If you install 7 or 8.1 and then 10 after that, you will, although I should warn you that in no case will you retain any installed programs. If you get 7, you'll only keep your documents, which you could easily back up onto a USB key or another hard drive partition anyways.
My advice is to take all your documents, saved games, your steam installation, and anything else that's on the partiton you're going to install to, and move it to a USB key or another partition. Then, install overtop your chosen Windows partition and move things back/reinstall them as you see fit.
(One thing I do is keep my Windows installation on a separate disk from everything else - My games and any important documents are on my D drive. This means I can install anything on C and keep my D drive perfectly functional.)
Anything installed on another hard drive will require the right backends to work again after the reinstall, and won't show up as installed, but should work regardless. (e.g. I have Mass Effect installed from another computer so it has no Registry entry, but it works because I have the right directX and .Net and C++ installed.)