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If you recall, last week we performed the leap from Windows XP to Windows 7. In a nutshell: An in-place upgrade didn’t fare well. Of course, in-place upgrades aren’t supported from Windows XP to Windows 7. Given the heavily-used XP installation caused serious bloat to the Windows 7 installation, we can see why.

When we performed a clean installation and, with a bit of trepidation, used Windows Easy Transfer to move our files and settings from old machine to new, it worked better than we expected, but our final recommendation was simply to save your data, reformat, and start with a fresh, clean installation of Windows 7.

This week, we take ET editor Joel’s Vista production machine—a well broken-in Core i7 based computer—and explore the various ways to make it into a Windows 7 PC. Before we begun, we mirrored the entire hard drive to a second drive, which Joel kept in a fireproof safe for some reason. Continued…