Vista confusion

times_champion · 16 Aug 2007 at 21:58

I am thinking of getting Vista when I get a DX10 card at xmas (mainly for crysis!) but im a little confused about which version i need.....

I think I probably need home premium, but I bought my Dell PC dorect from them about 18 mths ago and I dont seem to have a back-up copy of XP with a reg code etc, so does that mean I will have to get the full version, or can I use the upgrade version? What will happen to all my save files, documents etc - will I have to re-install all my programmes? Thanks for the help!

marc2003 · 16 Aug 2007 at 22:14

i strongly recommend a clean install when getting a new version of windows. windows should never be upgraded in my opinion. of course there is the downside of having to re-install everything....

but provided you backup everything first such as your personal files, downloads and and save games and such like, preferably to another hard drive/partition (or dvd as a last resort).... a new install should be fairly painless. i recommend home premium x64 oem. one thing to be aware of is that the oem version is tied to the motherboard of the system you're installing it on. if you plan to upgrade the system during the lifetime you'll be running that version of windows, then you need to look at getting a retail version of windows.

provided you keep the same motherboard, you can still upgrade all other major hardware components such as cpu, gfx card, ram etc whilst running an oem version of windows.

times_champion · 16 Aug 2007 at 23:17

so i can get the £64 OEM vista version then?

marc2003 · 16 Aug 2007 at 23:29

times_champion said:
so i can get the £64 OEM vista version then?

yup.

stoofa · 17 Aug 2007 at 11:03

times_champion said:
so i can get the £64 OEM vista version then?

Just remember that if you upgrade your motherboard in the future you will also need to buy a new Windows license if you decide to take the OEM route.