Mine has shipped and is scanned out of East Midlands airport for delivery today :)    Anyway its not a good place to ask that question on a dell forum as it is illegal to do a clean install as you will have an upgrade dvd, anyway get google up and type in a search "windows 7 upgrade clean install" and you will find something to get you on your way.

regards

Doughy

thanks for the help

its not illegal to do a clean install.

its illegal if you have vista basic or xp or anything below that

what i want to know is HOW to do a clean install. after hitting custom install, then what

i dont have my dvd yet...

im in the uk and wanted to know if i could do a clean install with the dell windows 7 upgrade disc and if i can how do i do it i havent actually got the disc yet but it has shipped and i should get it by 11 november

Here are installation options for about any scenario you can think of. You'll just want to select the "custom" install option near the beginning of the process.

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/

Microsoft published their 'official' way for doing a clean install from an upgrade DVD:

http://bink.nu/news/microsoft-official-method-for-clean-install-using-upgrade-media.aspx

According to an update on Paul Thurrott's site, Microsoft's preference now is that you simply call them if your installation doesn't activate.  (That's lots easier than the "double-install" method.)

Why bother with a double install when you can just change a registry key and run a command?  Calling microsoft for activation has always been painless in my experiance, but the registry solution still seems quicker.