Can I still restore my laptop after Windows 7 Upgrade?

November 9, 2009 7:59 AM

I'm planning on upgrading my HP laptop to Windows 7 and want to know if the internal Vista restore image will still be available after I do that.

I have a HP DV6915 Pavilion Laptop that came with Vista pre-installed and came with a Vista restore image on a separate partition on the harddrive. I've used that image to restore the machine to the factory settings twice now without any problem. Now, I just bought the Windows 7 upgrade disk but haven't had the courage to apply it yet. What I want to know is if that upgrade will kill off that restore image or if I will still be able to use it revert back to Vista if the 7 upgrade goes flooey.

posted by octothorpe to computers & internet (7 comments total)

As long as you don't actually blow away the restore partition, you should be fine.
posted by JaredSeth at 8:16 AM on November 9

Jared, are you sure that the Window 7 installer doesn't helpfully blow away the restore partition for me?
posted by octothorpe at 8:22 AM on November 9

In each Windows 7 install I've done so far, I've had complete control over which partition gets used. Admittedly I've been doing clean installs and not upgrades but I have successfully left existing data partitions unchanged. XP and Vista both allowed you to leave partitions untouched and I can't imagine Microsoft removing that functionality in the Win7 upgrade.
posted by JaredSeth at 9:14 AM on November 9

Seconding JaredSeth -- during installation, Windows 7 asks which partition you would like to install to (I just did a clean install of Windows 7 on my Compaq/HP laptop that has a restore partition). I don't think you even have the option of wiping that partition during the clean installation process. If you are doing an upgrade over Vista, my guess is that it would just "cover up" the OS on its existing partition.

Further, now that I've done the clean install on my laptop, the option to do a system restore still shows up at the bottom of my bios/pre-OS startup screen.
posted by puritycontrol at 9:42 AM on November 9

You can delete the Vista restore partition as part of the Windows7 install, but you would have to explicitly click the 'Advanced' option when selecting which disk to use, then click the 'Delete Partition' link.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:49 AM on November 9

Great answers, thanks. I feel a lot more confident about going through the upgrade now. Or at least confident that I can start all over again if the upgrade doesn't work or if Windows 7 sucks (worse than Vista).
posted by octothorpe at 10:47 AM on November 9

OK, ran the upgrade last night and I didn't lose any data and it seems to be running fine. There was one small moment of terror when it refused to boot during the first forced reboot. I ended up having to pull the battery out and put it back and after that it booted back into the installer. The installer sits and spins without updating its progress indicator for a much longer time than it should, I kept thinking that it was hung but the drive light was blinking so I left it along and went to watch TV while it did its thing.
posted by octothorpe at 5:26 AM on November 17