Upgrading from Win 7 to Win 10 - is clean install necessary?

[br1anstorm]

I have EasyBCD 2.4 installed on a laptop which has Windows 7 Pro dual booting with Linux Mint, in Legacy MBR/BIOS mode, not UEFI. It works well.

Obviously Win7 is now at end-of-life. I know that it is possible to do an in-place upgrade to Win 10. The Ten Forums site has a useful tutorial explaining how to do this using the Microsoft Creation Tool - as mentioned by Ex-Brit in this thread . I notice that Terry60 has also recently done the switch or upgrade from Win7 to Win10, as noted here.

The in-place upgrade guidance says that all data, apps and other settings are retained or preserved during the upgrade (but that 3rd party antivirus programs should be removed and then reinstalled after the upgrade). It does make sense to do a disk-image beforehand anyway, in case anything goes wrong.

My question is - I think - a simple one. I know that EasyBCD modifies the Windows bootloader to enable dual booting. So in carrying out an in-place upgrade from Win7 to Win10 using the approved Microsoft tool, does that process preserve and "carry forward" the installed EasyBCD program and the modified MBR settings into the [new] Windows 10 installation? Or does EasyBCD have to be uninstalled, and reinstalled after the upgrade to Win10, and the dual-booting reconfigured?

In other words, does that in-place upgrade from Win7 to Win10 leave the existing Linux Mint installation unscathed and still permit dual booting afterwards? Or is it necessary - after the upgrade - to change or re-set the EasyBCD settings to enable dual booting into the Linux OS? Or (worse) does such an upgrade require the Linux OS to be reinstalled too (seems unlikely, but I have to ask....)?

I'd welcome advice and comment on points-to-watch - especially from those who have already done that in-place upgrade from Win7 to Win10 with EasyBCD installed.

 

[Terry60]

EasyBCD doesn't

... modifies the Windows bootloader...

It takes absolutely no part in the booting of your PC.
bootmgr is 100% MS
bootmgr keeps its boot data in the BCD store which is the functional equivalent of the boot.ini text file used by XP's NTLDR.
Unfortunately for the end user, the BCD is not a text file, and the MS provided "bcdedit" is a GUI-less command-line utility not at all user-friendly even for fossils like me who've been around PC's since before they even had graphics capability and where all communication between user and PC was via text commands.
EasyBCD was written by mqudsi as a functional GUI for bcdedit and has evolved into something with much more function and automation, but it still does not boot your PC, just enables you to modify the way bootmgr will manage future boots ad infinitum or until you use it again to undo previous or make further BCD changes

does that in-place upgrade from Win7 to Win10 leave the existing Linux Mint installation unscathed and still permit dual booting afterwards? Or is it necessary - after the upgrade - to change or re-set the EasyBCD settings to enable dual booting into the Linux OS?

The simple answer is
Yes.
My only advice is to make sure you've enough space in your W7 partition before the upgrade, because the upgrade will install W10 and keep the data to enable a future optional restore to W7 in a Windows.old file

In my case, I actually upgraded my W7/W8.1 dual boot to W7/W10 with the original free upgrade after trying the W10 Beta in a triple boot with the other two.
I never liked W8 8.1 or 10 compared to W7, so in the post you quote, I was merely switching which of W7/W10 was the default boot in the BCD (a mere tick in EasyBCD), not upgrading from W7.

 

[br1anstorm]

Thanks, Terry, that's all useful information.

If my grasp of the booting setup, bootmgr, BCD and all that is a bit simplistic, it's because I lack expert knowledge. I was just concerned that an upgrade from Win7 to Win10 would either fail because it couldn't cope with whatever modifications EasyBCD had made; or that it would proceed, but would disrupt the dual-booting arrangement.

In fact I took an ultra-cautious approach. I had Win7 and Linux Mint in a dual boot setup. I started by making a disk image (as an insurance policy!). Since I had no personal data on the laptop concerned, and was planning to install a new version of Mint anyway, I decided to remove the existing dual-boot Mint, deleted its partitions, and expanded the Win7 partition accordingly (ie I went back to a Win7-only setup). That gave ample space for Win10, and for any .old files which might be required if I wished to revert to Win7 - though it looks from the Win10 settings as if the option to revert is only on offer for a ten-day period.

I then did an in-place upgrade of Win7 to Win10. That worked OK - though I have had to update some drivers and programs to work with Win10. I, too, rather liked Win7 (and did not like Win 8). But with Win7 at end-of-life, there seemed to me little point in keeping it going.

So all I need to do now is re-do the partitioning, install a more recent version of Linux Mint, and set up the dual-booting again with EasyBCD. With luck, all will be well!

 

[Terry60]

Good luck.
I've grown quite accustomed to W10 now and pleasantly surprised by the fact that it's perceptibly faster starting up 3rd party programs than W7 is.
I'm reminded when I occasionally return to W7 to keep its cogs oiled, and have to wait extra seconds for responses.
I stuck with W7 to the bitter end (and beyond - they kept patching it way past EOS) mainly because WMC had been deprecated and I used that to manage multiple Terabytes of recorded media.
After a lot of trial and error, I replaced WMC functionality with Kodi on W10 which eventually looked and behaved as desired, so now I have little need of W7 but it's available as an emergency fallback.