please scrutiinize

Because an upgrade will bring along a lot of clutter, I was thinking of reinstalling Win 7 then upgrading to Win 8 thereby avoiding the clutter I've built up and perfoming a clean upgrade with my programs.

Opposed to this is to do a clean install of Win 8 and hope the Ofice 2010 I have preloaded with my Dell and for which I have prod keys will be retrievable once 8 is installed. No other programs are important.

 

Nothing survives a reinstall of the OS peter, including Office. Before going for a reinstall make sure you have installation media and product keys for everything you will need softwarewise. And make separate backups of any personal stuff you keep on the OS partition as that will be overwritten too.

 

>>Yes, I will. Which of the 2 choices in my first post would you choose. A clean install would be great if I can retrieve the office I paid for and still have the poduct key for.

 

I assume you want to end up with 8, not 7? In that case just do a clean install of 8 - you don't have to install 7 first, and as to Office, as long as you have the installation disk and product key it should be straightforward.

 

>>I am ready to go but I can't find the place to download Office Home and Student 2010, 64 bit. The 32 bit will not work. I have scoured Dell and MS but cannot find where to download this 64 bit Office product which I have the key for. The typical site dows not differentiate between the 32 and 64 but it does make a difference.

 

Somehow I doubt that this is a 32 or 64-bit problem peter. Where are you at exactly and what happens when you try to install the 32-bit version? How did you acquire Office originally?

 

>>I went thru this a Year ago when i did a clean installation. There used to be a site at MS where you could get the 64 bit office 2010 Home and Student which came preinstalled with my Dell. It is gone. I then used the trial which worked. Believe me that Office does not work with 32 bit in this pc.
I think i am onto something at Dell. Digtal Rivers.
I'll be in touch.