Upgrading from XP to Windows 7 64bit..

Hi All,

I have currently a wish to upgrade from XP (32bit) to Windows 7 - 64bit. The options are:

1) Upgrade to MS Vista, then upgrade to Windows 7.
2) Make use of 3rd party software to make a inplace upgrade of XP to Win7 (Pcmover, zinstall etc).
3) Make a clean of Win7 (without formatting the disk).

What could be best option? I am currently thinking of option 3, but in this case i would like to ask what folder's are moved in windows.old, for instance i have folders like:

c:\data
c:\developer

Are they removed from the system/harddisk when Windows 7 are installed, untouched or moved to windows.old or what happens to them?

Thanks in advance,
Hüseyin A.

First, there is NO upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit. It will always be a clean
install. You _can_ use an upgrade version, but it will still require a clean
install. This means that both option 1 and option 2 are out. So you will
always be doing option 3, plan accordingly.

You should run Windows Easy Transfer (WET) on the old computer before the
installation to preserve your files and settings. You can find a version for
XP here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en.

Windows.old will not include non-system folders such as \data or \developer.
But the installation won't touch those anyway, so it shouldn't be a big
deal. However, ALWAYS DO A BACKUP OF CRITICAL FILES BEFORE INSTALLING A NEW
OPERATING SYSTEM. Just in case.

There is no way to upgrade from a 32-bit to a 64-bit OS.
Your best shot is option number 3, clean install.
Formatting the disk is advisable in order to erase your old OS.
Before doing that, backup all your important information to an external
media in order to restore it once Windows 7 is installed.

Option 3 since there is no direct upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit.

Use Windows Easy Transfer or a backup program of your choice, but not
the XP backup utility: there is no facility to read its backups in
Windows 7. Be sure you can read any backups you make in Windows 7.

Delete the partition you want to install on and leave the space empty.
Highlight the space as where you want to install Windows 7. If you do
this, the Windows 7 installer can create the 100MB system partition it
prefers for its boot files and will partition and format the remainder
for the installation.

[LeeroyTonner]

Zinstall is the only option that supports 32bit to 64bit upgrades.
So doesn't seem to be much choice here - either that or a clean install, i.e. reinstalling every app manually.

Here's a quote from the product page

So it does support upgrades.

Zinstall DOES NOT support an "UPGRADE" from 32-bit to 64-bit, it
supports "MIGRATION" from 32-bit to 64-bit. There is a distinct difference.

I have just finished doing what you want to do.
But I used another option - I created a dual boot system.

If you have enough disk space why don't you just create another
partition for W7?

My intial XP system was on a 500GB drive with 3 partitions: C, D and
E. I had ove 150GB free so I decided to create another partition for
W7, the F partition (I used partition magic to shorten the D & E
partitions and create the new F). I then upgraded to W7 Professional -
64bit.

Since you can not upgrade to W7 form within XP you have to boot from
the W7 install disk. Eventually it'll ask where you want to put it and
you point it to the new clean partition, in my case F. Once installed,
when you choose W7 from the startup menu, your new W7 partition will
become the 'C' partition!! and the former XP C partition may become D;
the former D becomes E and E becomes F. But that doesn't matter if you
are in W7.

(On another install, the former XP C partition was placed at the end
and became F. The former D & E partitions stayed as D & E. - how that
happened I don't know, but I liked it :-) )

Now you have the option of using either system and if you run the
install in W7 on some existing applications to the same place where
they were in XP, you can run that application from bothe systems. That
works only for apps that can run under W7. The W7 install is to create
the required W7 registry entries.
To preserve all the apps setups, I first renamed the app and
re-installed it from W7. I then deleted that install (not uninstalled
as that would get rid of registry entries) and renamed the original
back to its normal name.
I did that to my MS Flight Sim which takes up a lot of space and I
didn't want 2 copies nor did I want to maintain 2 sets of addons. That
would have been a nightmare.

Thanks for your input. I am running XP on a laptop with only 1 partition, so
either i should reorganize my partition (like shrinking partition to make
room for a new one or go ahead and delete/create partitions).

Anyway, maybe i should think more about it :)

What is your opinion about Win7, could it not replace your XP installations?

Win7 is solid and stable and I have switched to it from XP on my main PC,
I tried Vista but didn't like it.

You mentioned you have a laptop - if it has an Intel chipset then check
the driver situation before moving to Win7. Many Intel drivers are *NOT*
included with Win7. Although some come down in system update there is
currently no Win7 driver for the Intel Extreme graphics card.

Additionally, this is the right place to start looking for Intel drivers:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/default.aspx
I found there Win 7 x64 drivers for my 945 Express chipset (GMA 950 graphics
and AHCI).
Synaptics touchpad drivers can be found here:
http://www.synaptics.com/support/drivers

I have a HP laptop, and all Win7 drivers seems to be available from HP. So
there is no driver issue i guess :)

So, what pat of "32-bit to 64-bit" did you choose to ignore? Or overlook?
Or simply not understand?

Not the Intel(R) 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller though :-)

There was a driver supplied with Vista but not with Win7 for some reason.

So far I like it. But it takes some getting used to.

I need XP because Win7 doesn't have drivers for some of my hardware.
And some special software I have won't run under it.

Initially I thought of downloading the virtual XP mode addon for Win7
but I read too many negative comments about it - being only an XP
with limited functions and also being slow. So I decided to go the
dual-boot way.

Have you considered upgrading to a larger notebook hard drive? These
are getting cheaper by the day.

I am lucky with the drivers, currently all my laptop drivers for win7 seems
to be released by HP. Also I have app. 150GB left space on the harddrive, so
the space won't be a issue. Just need to be sure I have a full backup of my
xp system before i either choose to install dual-boot or clean install of
win7.

What about your external peripherals like a printer and/or scanner?

That was one of my issues - I have an older HP multifunction
printer/scanner/copier which does not have full W7 support.
I can print with it but the W7 default scanner driver won't allow me
to select all the different resolutions I could under XP.

I dont have a scanner and printer should not be a issue :)

Every time you boot XP, it destroys Windows 7 restore points.
Please take that into account.