Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

I just finished upgrading Windows 7 Pro to Windows 8.1 Pro. I thought it was supposed to keep all files and applications, but only a few of the applications were carried over. Seems like I have to re-install most of the programs, especiall games, Office 365, and Microsoft Visual Studio. All the data, such as My Documents and downloads were kept.

Now I'm pissed -- the reason I elected to Upgrade instead of Full Install (e.g. erase hard drive and start from scratch) was so that I wouldn't have to reinstall all the apps, many of which require licence keys.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by master.ainorsoft

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— this happens more often than people expect: the Windows 8.1 upgrade keeps user data but will remove or fail to migrate programs it detects as incompatible. , and are onto something — an upgrade can leave you with a working profile but a lot of programs that need attention. The short checklist below focuses on recovering what you can and making a cleaner path forward.

First, get yourself back up to speed: sign in to vendor accounts (Microsoft/Office, Steam, Visual Studio/MSDN) and re-download installers from there — Office 365 installs are managed by your Microsoft account, and Visual Studio downloads/keys are available from your MS account or MSDN. For games installed via Steam/Origin/etc., reinstall the client, then point it at the existing game folders so the client verifies files instead of re-downloading everything.

Forensics and gentle recovery: review the upgrade logs to see why particular apps were removed (look in the setup log folder created during upgrade). If you need product keys or app settings, you can view the old system registry hive without booting back into the old OS:

  • Run Registry Editor as admin, select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE → File → Load Hive and open the old SYSTEM/ SOFTWARE hive from the previous-install backup, give it a temporary name, export any needed keys, then File → Unload Hive. Do not edit values there — only view/export.

To inventory what was installed before and make reinstallation easier, run these PowerShell queries (run as Administrator) to list installed programs:

Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* |
Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher

Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* |
Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher

Prevention: image the drive before future upgrades (disk-images save hours), keep a record of license emails/accounts, and consider a package manager (Chocolatey) to script reinstalls.

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Member Avatar for ryantroop

Erm.. Yep! I did it, too. It goes by faster than you think. The real kicker is gonna be running disk cleanup on all the archived win7 stuff. :) Enjoy that. If you're a drinker, grab something tasty.

Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

I think all I have to do is delete c:\windows.old folder.

Member Avatar for ryantroop

There are some other system files they keep. To make sure you get rid of it all, I would recommend you use the disk cleaner utility... but, to each their own :-/

Member Avatar for happygeek

I always tend to think of an OS upgrade as a false economy. You may save time (or not as AD has discovered) in not having to reinstall applications, but if you keep your data separate from your applications the fresh start option must surely always win out in terms of clearing clutter, speeding up the system, ironing out those usability oddities that have crept in over the months/years etc.

Member Avatar for Reverend Jim

I find that because Microsoft keeps changing where things are put, it's much better to install from scratch than to upgrade, otherwise you end up with a mish-mash of two different directory structures.

Member Avatar for master.ainorsoft

As you did, I met such tricky things too. Later, I found a good tutorial on preparation before Windows upgrading: http://lnkd.in/bTDAYME

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