What are the steps to upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7?

Read the article that everyone's commenting on.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed for comments on this article.

I'm on the brink of changing my computer from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium. No great reason except that although I really like Vista vs XP (honest!), my wife's new laptop has Win7, I just bought an Office 2007 3-user pack and want to get the two machines as close together as reasonable, and both "modern" (even with Office 2010 around the corner). My question is: do you have any feedback from other people who've made the WinVista -> Win7 and, ignoring your advice (why would we DO that???) preferred to do an Upgrade rather than Format and Install - good news or bad news welcomed, before the final decision day.

I find your articles very informative. I also installed 7 after considerable difficulty and help from a great Microsoft techie. Apparently a wireless mouse created a hardware problem during installation that caused the install to lockup at a certain point(found out long into the process). I had backup of my files, but for some reason I cannot access the info on my external hard drive. Says I have used 450 GB of space but when I click on directories only shows approximately 45 GB present in directories when all are added together. No directory exists that indicates the Backup from the prior day. Even using the hidden files (show) the backup simply does not seem to exist. Unfortunately the windows.old000 file in C Drive created during the install does not indicate the info either. Help on finding missing files would be appreciated if you can. Tip for future installers. If you are installing to a laptop with wireless mouse, unplug and use keyboard on the laptop.

I have a program from Serif called PCmover which is a Windows 7 upgrade assistant which I intend to use upgrading from WinXP SP3 to Win7. have you come across it before and do you have any comments on its use. Many thanks

Not yet. I'd love to hear how it (or the competing PC-Mover software from LapLink) work for people.

17-Dec-2009

This is certainly encouraging, particularly that it worked so well on an older computer. I also have a Dell -- Dimension 4550, running XP home, Sp3. I have run the "is this machine capable of running Win 7" program (I have forgotten the exact name), and it reported that the video card would not support the graphics required (it is nVidia). Apparently it would not have supported the Vista Aero (?) graphics. Am I right in assuming that if I want to make the jump to Wiin7 with that particular computer, I would have to install a new Video Card?

I did not run the upgrade advisor, and I probably should have. My wife's computer scores lowest on the video ability after the installation, so I suspect it's similarly limited. My believe is that Win 7 will install just fine, but either video performance will be poor, OR aero effects will not be available (or both).

17-Dec-2009

Microsoft provides two very helpful free tools for migration from old XP machines. Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor will check your hardware and drivers and recommend what you should get before the install. Windows Easy Trasfer backs up the data and application settings and reads them back during the install. The only scary moment during my install came when the system decided to reboot at least five times and every time I had to enter the serial number and a few other data from scratch, leading me to start believing it might be an infinite loop... but it was not.

You won't miss much if you are not able to use the Aero graphics features - so far I have actually not found it to be useful for anything. You can install Windows 7 without upgrading the graphics card.

I can comment on the Vista to Win& upgrade. After a full backup and disk image I decided to just try the upgrade mode rather than the clean install on my year hold HP with Vista. It went off without a hitch. Not a single issue thus far. All my data was where it should be, all my programs worked.

What went in my favor was that the machine was built for vista and that I was running fairly new software. I had no legacy issues to deal with. If your machine and software can handle Vista, Win7 should be no problem.

That Dell Latitude D610 is what I am using for Windows 7. Try to do your touchpad software and you will have more problems, or not. It will give you some grief.
Now here's what I don't like about Windows 7, read below:

Windows 7 will remove icons from your desktop and systray. I have seen this happen just by trying to rename an icon.
Will not hold settings like Restoring Last Internet session
Can't drag & drop items to the task bar. U have to Pin them.
Can't go back to orginal Start Menu.
Can't set a default Mail program
W7 will take an icon on your screen and change it to a dead icon
W7 will change your non-Aero View to Aero view.
During Windows update I chose 2 updates and unchecked 2 others and Windows Update downloaded the ones that I had unchecked.
Cannot pull up another browser from the IE Icon from the taskbar.
Event Viewer - not showing a big screen for events that has happened like Checking the hard drive for errors. You have to scroll.
Cannnot rename icons that you have pinned to your Start menu unless you go to the icon's properties and go to the General tab.

Is there some reason that your wife didn't do this upgrade herself? It seems to me that she would be more similar to a lot more of your readers. That is, she probably isn't a computer geek, but knows how to oprerate the machine.

Heh. Actually a good observation. I guess she's somewhat spoiled in that I do all the computer maintenance here. While she'd be quite capable I'm sure, it's not something she's ever had to deal with or think about. The other reason is simply that I wanted to do it so as to be able to document the process here.

17-Dec-2009

Although I have a new HP MS214 all in one with Windows 7 Home Premium, I also have a Dell Latitude D610. I may consider installing Pro on that one. Also, I have a C640 and I've seen one of those on eBay with Windows 7 for sale. My D610 specs are similar to yours, except my hard drive is 100GB (93GB usable). Why does Microsoft says you can't run Windows 7 on these legacy machines?

To reduce complaints and bad user experiences.

Seriously, I'm sure you can run Windows 7 on less than the minimum required hardware - but it may have issues. Perhaps the aero effects won't work, and if that was important to you then you've just had a bad experience. Perhaps it'll be slower than you need, and you've just had a bad user experience. Or maybe it'll be enough for you, but you'll officially be on your own.

17-Dec-2009

To post a comment on "What are the steps to upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7?", please return to that article's main page.