Thanks, MikeI certianly see your point. But correct me if I'm wrong. Let's say I have XP then upgrade to Vista, then upgrade to W7, then later on I have a problem and have to reinstall the OS. Don't I have to go back and reinstall all three OSs? In that case, I think I'd rather have the full OS, and not go the upgrade route.Bob

Hi Bob,I've never been a fan of repair installs. Don't trust them, despite what others may say. Instead I just keep making regular backup images of my partitions. I've never yet been faced with having to reinstall XP. There was one occasion when O&O screwed up my C: partition. Fortunately I had a recent backup and was back in business within an hour. I am very careful about system maintenance and security and, over the years, reckon I've become quite good at it. System performance doesn't degrade over time and remains very stable, which is why I remain reluctant to destroy what I have.Regards,Mike

I'm not talking repair installs. I think MS has removed that possibility from Vista and W7. I'm talking reformat. For fun I sometimes work on other peoples' computers who are not as careful as you (I try to take good care of my computers). Sometimes the quickest way to fix them is to reformat. The upgrade installations that I thought you were talking about can be a hassle.Bob

I'm not talking repair installs. I think MS has removed that possibility from Vista and W7. I'm talking reformat. For fun I sometimes work on other peoples' computers who are not as careful as you (I try to take good care of my computers). Sometimes the quickest way to fix them is to reformat. The upgrade installations that I thought you were talking about can be a hassle.Bob

Hi Bob,I wasn't aware that the repair option had been removed from Vista and W7. I do wonder why? There must be some other option to recover, say along the lines of System Restore. Otherwise I was assuming that once you had achieved the dizzy heights of a full W7 upgrade you would run a repair install using the W7 installation disk if the operating system had became unstable or inaccessible. Perhaps regular imaging of a working stable system is the best way after all. That's one reason why my o/s is installed in a small 20GB partition - reduces imaging and maintenance times. I know pundits in the past have always advocated one huge partition for everything, including the XP o/s, but I've never been conscious of any downsides to keeping the o/s on its own partition. I've even managed to resize/enlarge the C: partition (not usually recommended as fraught with potential dangers) using Acronis Disk Director.Regards,Mike