Upgrading to Windows 7 from Vista
 

Hi Folks, has anyone upgraded from Vista to 7 yet? Should I back up my computer (photos and music) or does Windows 7 retain every thing?

Thanks for the info.

Backing up everything before you start is the only sensible option in case it goes tits up. It should retain everything ................................but.

Also you could use the opportunity to remove all the accumulated crud and do a clean install of W7 then re-install all you programs. Or at the very least run CC cleaner before you start.

From what you have said it doesn't sound like you are currently backing up your important stuff.
So what I would suggest is that you go and buy a 1TB hard drive and an external hard drive case. Remove your existing hard drive and replace it with the new 1TB drive. (Don't worry it's a straightforward swap) Then fit your old hard drive into the new external hard drive case. Put Win7 on the new drive (64 bit version if your system can take it) and your old drive now becomes your external back up drive. You can copy your important docs. back onto the new hard drive once your have installed Win7. Once up and running you can then clear the old drive of all the unwanted rubbish, including the old operating system. Cost for this is probably around £70. You could also use the opportunity to fit some extra RAM as the 64bit version of Win7 recognises more that 4gigs of RAM.

Can Win XP be upgraded to windows 7?

Having done this upgrade on 3 different PCs/laptops now, I can confirm that the upgrade from Vista to 7 is very simple - as others say, just ensure you've backed any important documents up - usb/cd or external hard drive, your choice.

XP to Vista took a little longer as there were one or two compatability issues that had to be ironed out but the PC is running like a dream now on Windows 7.

In short - I'd thoroughly recommend doing it - far, far better OS than Vista!

Basically Mr D, no.

From what I have read I recommend to do a clean install. If you just upgrade from Vista :yuk: W7 will be slower than W7 that had been installed from a freshly formatted hdd.

(Can't find the article right now, I'll post it asap)

7 7 7 7

Thanks for the info. I've bought the upgrade version, can I do a clean install with this?

Cheers :ok:

Probably, but you may be required to insert the original qualifying media during the installation.

Since you aim to do a clean install, you won't lose anything by trying, as you will have backed up your data elsewhere.

SD

License-wise, I read it as being okay, so is a smooth physical upgrade not possible, or is it just the detritus issue that you refer to?

From Microsoft: http://emea.microsoftstore.com/UK/Mi...3_HPup_default

succinctequivial enough :ok:

There was a thread on this very subject not long ago....

I did a Vista to W7 upgrade, backed up all my important stuff first to an external HDD.

Upgrade went very smoothly indeed over about an hour and a half and nothing was lost, including settings, favourites etc.

EDIT:

And here's the link to the previous thread http://www.pprune.org/computer-inter...s-7-vista.html

WIN 7 UPGRADE VERSION - BIG WARNING TIME... TWICE OVER:

ONE: If you have XP on your machine, and buy the "upgrade" to Win 7, make very sure to copy off all your documents, valuable stuff, etc before you start. You cannot "upgrade" straight from one to the other - it will delete lots of stuff. Your documents may or may not survive if they are on drive C.

TWO: You have to leave the Win XP on the machine, or the Win 7 will refuse to validate. It expects to be installed over an earlier version of Windows, even though it will delete that. The previous process of "insert qualifying media" doesn't apply. It gets very complicated if you wipe the XP and start from a clean machine.


Don't ask how I know...

Oh, fooey!

I don't want to do that now, but I thought I might later on - on the den machine. The problem is that I have one of the W7 RCs on it, so restoring with the disc I had to make would be the requirement it seems.

That sucks! It's not only full of HP detritus (I love that word) it also insists on scrapping my partitions and putting that dumb restore partition back.

At least I won't have to download all the SPs. I hope!

Why not put W7 on, then partition I hear you ask. Cos of the afore mentioned thing about not being able to get C partition down to the required size. ("Partition Specific thread.")

Whatever happened to good old F-disk and DOS?:*

I upgraded from Win7RC to Win7 with no problems. One has to edit a single line of text to enable it.

Specifically Upgraded?

That's intriguing, since it states a clean install after RC. One hardly likes to ask.:rolleyes:

I guess Microsoft's main concern is that the RC is Windows Ultimate, and they didn't want people upgrading from Ultimate to a non-Ultimate version for various reasons.

Google will help you find a step-by-step guide on upgrading from the RC, but basically, copy the installation DVD to HD, go down the "sources" folder until you find cversion.ini, and change "MinClient=7233.0" to "MinClient=7000.0". There are more complex ways of upgrading to a non-Ultimate product.

Dottore Rivets,

You seem to have backed yourself into a corner with that machine.

My inclination would be to acquire and fit a second hard drive (they are not expensive), then copy all your "stuff" over to it - documents, downloaded software installers, that sort of thing. Then make sure that you have install CDs for the software you want to keep.

Remove the new hard drive (for safety). Wipe the existing detritus-filled one and run FDISK to set up the partitions the way you want them to be. Then install your new Win 7 (full version) on it. Then plug your new hard drive back in, install your software from it or the install CDs, and copy stuff to the partitions you want.

You can't upgrade from Win 7 RC to Win 7 final using an "upgrade" disk - or I don't think you can. I've not tried.

PS: Biushfiva's trick certainly worked for installing later versions along the Beta - RC route. I'm not sure what it will do if you try to install Release Home Premium over RC Ultimate - I could imagine some "interesting" results.

Upgrade the Windows 7 RC to any retail version Icrontic Tech shows how to upgrade to any version, but I've not tried it.