Upgrading Vista to W7

[vancouv]

I've read a few posts already but thought I'd just ask for the most up to date views.

I've got a laptop that is running Vista. I'm thinking of upgrading to Windows 7 and was wondering the following:

Do you just run the upgrade disk and W7 magically appears in place of Vista?

Is it likely I'll have any problems with drivers? The laptop is not connected to anything except a wireless mouse and an occasional external hard disk.

Will all my settings be preserved, such as favourites and cookies in IE8?

Any other problems I might have????

Thanks

[cats_five]

Firstly, have you checked to see if W7 drivers are available for your laptop and printers etc.? If not, I suggest you desist. You might get a printer working with a Vista driver (check the Internet to see if anyone else has), but unless you have drivers for the actual laptop itself you are unlikely IMHO to get a stable system out of it.

If they are available there is a lot of information from Microsoft about how to do it. You can do an in-pace upgrade:
Upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7 - Help & How-to - Microsoft Windows (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/help/upgrading-from-windows-vista-to-windows-7)

Or a custom installation upgrade:
Upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7 (custom installation) - Help & How-to - Microsoft Windows (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/help/upgrading-from-windows-vista-to-windows-7-custom)

Personally I would never go the upgrade route - so many windows installations have been doomed from the outset as they are the result of upgrading a system that (possibly unbeknown to the user) had problems with the registry.

[Bushfiva]

yes no yes no. It is a robust upgrade path.

[61 Lafite]

Buy an external disk, back up your system, then upgrade and get back what you want later.

Win7 is great, turns your underwhelming Vista laptop into a high performance machine, but does need at least 1.5Gb RAM.

Use the opportunity to dump all the crap on your machine by doing a fresh install. The few days you spend making it all work again will be well spent.

I have done this for 6 machines to date.

Regards

Lafite

[tony draper]

I'm still running XP pro,thinking about WIN 7 but I propose to get a new hard disk and do a clean install on that,if I clag the XP pro disk in the machine as a Slave will I be able to copy stuff across to the new hard disk with 7 running on it?

[Saab Dastard]

Tony, yes. Unless you've encrypted it!

SD

[jimtherev]

In fact, Tony, that's exactly what I did with my last upgrade. Also boot from time to time onto my XP disk if I want to use one of the more esoteric apps I installed when I was running XP. Saves reinstalling all the crud into W7... even if it works, which I haven't bothered to try.

[DaHai]

I 'upgraded' from Vista Business to Windows 7 Home Premium on a Lenovo Laptop. Since it was not a straight upgrade, ie Business to Business or Home to Home, I needed to do a complete reinstall, as against an upgrade. Prior to this I checked the Lenovo sight and they recommended programmes that needed to be deleted prior to changing to Win 7. Programmes such as Password Manager and the Thinkpad system come to mind. It would be worth you checking the computer manufacturers site for info, plus windows have a piece of downloaded software that can check your system for you and determine whichj will or won't work.
It took me pretty much most of a full day to remove, install and reload. A few problems but managed to solve them and I am not patrticularly computer literate.
Good luck.

[Keef]

I would certainly upgrade to Win 7 over Vista or XP.

I played with the Win 7 Beta test, for which I cloned the main drives in both machines and "updated" to Win 7 Beta. I then used the various levels of the pre-release Win 7. There was no way to go from Beta to final release as an upgrade, because the Beta was the "top of the range with everything" version, and cheapskate Keef only bought Home Premium.

I didn't have any problems doing the final upgrade - I backed up, did a clean install, and then reinstalled the stuff I wanted. That cleared out all the old tat that had accumulated in both PCs. First time in about ten years and long overdue!

Win 7 was very impressive in the way it found drivers for all my peripherals - except a very old SCSI card used for the scanner and two CDRW drives. Win 7 doesn't really support SCSI. I ditched the CDRWs (new ones are much better, and cheaper), and bought a fine new scanner for not-a-lot.

The only serious problem I had with Win 7 was when I set up a "Home Group" on the desktop and laptop, and then realised I needed a "Workgroup". I deleted the Home Group on the desktop. That locked the C drives on BOTH PC and laptop! There was no useable way back from that, and I had to do the reinstall again on both machines.

Fortunately, a bootable Linux CD was able to unlock drives D and beyond. I can't remember now why it wouldn't do C.

I think (can't be sure) that Microsoft subsequently fixed whatever zaps all the C-drives on a network if the Home Group is turned off. I'm not going to experiment to find out.

[Blues&twos]

We upgraded from Vista to W7 Home premium 64 bit, and yes, it was as simple as putting the upgrade disk in the drawer and an hour and a half later W7 had magically appeared in place of Vista. We have had no problems with drivers/favourites etc etc, but I guess it depends on your set-up.

The upgrade disk was supplied in the post by Mesh, who we bought the original machine from just a coupple of months before W7 was released.

W7 seems pretty good.

[vancouv]

Thanks for the replies. I've looked at Toshiba's website and they recommend doing a clean install rather than an upgrade for my model of laptop, so I think I might go that route after all. They even supply a utility that, apparently, will re-install any Toshiba code that needs to be done after Win 7 - although I guess that might add a load of rubbish back that I don't need anyway!

My drive is partitioned into several logical drives - if I install onto C I presume the others will be left intact? It doesn't insist on formatting the whole drive?

Oh, and another thing. I currently have a 32-bit version of Vista with 2Gig of memory - is there any point in going to the 64-bit version if I don't expand my memory?

[hellsbrink]

My drive is partitioned into several logical drives - if I install onto C I presume the others will be left intact? It doesn't insist on formatting the whole drive?

Tell it to go to partition C, then that's all it will touch. The rest of your stuff will be safe, don't worry.

As far as 64-bit goes, there's no sense in looking at 64-bit windows if you are running under 4Gb ram. Also, I believe you do need a 64-bit processor for 64-bit windows so if you don't have that with your laptop (you don't tell us the model) then there's no sense in considering 64-bit Win 7.

Oh, one last thing. Personally, I don't think it's worth getting any version of 7 below "professional" and am running "ultimate" on the desktop PC (can jump between English and Dutch seamlessly on demand, something you cannot do with anything below that level). That's just my own personal thought, nothing more.

[Quartz-1]

In theory you can do an in-place upgrade. However, there are restrictions:

1 - you can only in-place upgrade a 32 bit version of Vista to a 32 bit version of W7, and a 64 bit version of Vista to a 64 bit version of W7. Otherwise you have to do a reinstall.

2 - you can only in-place upgrade to the same or better type of W7: for example you can upgrade from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate but not from Vista Enterprise to Windows 7 Home Premium.

Before you upgrade, run the Upgrade Advisor and it will tell you exactly what's up.

BTW W7 is leaps and bounds better than Vista. It's a whole lot more polished. It's Vista done right.