Windows upgrade and fresh install

[ohyouknow]

Hey everybody. I'm thinking of upgrading one of my pc's to win 8. I must ask though I am worried about the install issue. Is the best recommended way to just overwrite your files? My install on my intel system is fairly bare/newer and with no issues.

This brings me to my next point. If I were to do a fresh install of the OS on my computer (corruption and so forth) would I be able to use my win 7 oem dvd to install windows 7 then upgrade to win 8 from their website? Or is my win7 key now invalid and I can now only use win 8 on that motherboard and how would I get win8 back on?

Thanks so much guys!

 

[randomizer]

The OEM copy is restricted by license (although any technical restrictions are probably weak at best) to the computer it was originally purchased with. The Windows 8 license has no such restriction. Its license only requires that a previous copy of Windows be installed, and the license of that previous copy is unimporant. However, the edition (Pro, Home, etc) of the previous version is important, but the Pro edition of Windows 8 can upgrade just about anything so you're unlikely to run into any problems there. You can roll back again later if you want, but you'd have to do a fresh install as there is no downgrade feature.

 

[ohyouknow]

So I would be able to use windows 7 perfectly fine if I did a fresh install. The upgrade can just be applied once again from their site by dl'ing etc.? Assuming only 1 machine is running that win8 copy. Thanks random

 

[randomizer]

That should be fine I believe.

 

[ohyouknow]

Best answer selected by ohyouknow.