upgrading from xp to Windows 7
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I have no clue where to begin!
Questions I have:
Can I do this myself or is better to pay someone? (and who would I go to?) And a note on this, I am not completely computer illiterate, but I don't enjoy figuring things out on the pc if / when it goes wrong
Is it possible to bypass 7 and go straight to 8?
What is the approximate cost of upgrading the system?
Would this affect my broadband connection?
Help is much appreciated and thank you
Questions I have:
Can I do this myself or is better to pay someone? (and who would I go to?) And a note on this, I am not completely computer illiterate, but I don't enjoy figuring things out on the pc if / when it goes wrong
Is it possible to bypass 7 and go straight to 8?
What is the approximate cost of upgrading the system?
Would this affect my broadband connection?
Help is much appreciated and thank you
0
Comments
but before doing any form of messing around backup anything important to an external drive and then remove it and put it away safe
You will need to completely wipe the drive and start from fresh to go from XP to 7 or 8. This means you will need to backup your documents, music etc and any software will need to be reinstalled so make sure you have the CDs or downloaded installers to hand.
There is also a possibility that the manufacturer may not have drivers for certain bits of hardware in your computer under Windows 7. To assist with this further we would really need to know what make and model of PC you have.
As S2K has said, first step is to check the upgrade advisor.
I’ve done this a couple of times and I’m no PC expert. The upgrade itself was relatively simple, hunting down drivers can be a pain dependant on your kit. Google is your best bet here. If you search for “PC make model XP to Win 7 upgrade problems” you are bound to find someone who has done it before and you’ll get hints as to where to find the drivers. Also check the manufacturers website. If they’ve got win 7 drivers for your model available that’s a very good sign.
Is it possible to bypass 7 and go straight to 8?
You’ve already made the most excellent decision of bypassing Vista. Personally I’d go to 7 and wait for 9.
What is the approximate cost of upgrading the system?
About £60-£80 I guess. This will depend on which version of windows 7 you want. There are three: Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate. If you want to use windows backup across a network for example Home Premium is no good for you.
Would this affect my broadband connection?
No.
So the downside of having to do a clean install is that you will have to re-install all your programs and data from scratch. So make sure you have a good working back-up of all your data and the install disks or whatever for all the software you use.
One slightly helpful feature of Win 7 however is that it creates a Windows.Old folder which contains a lot of your old Windows set-up. I was able to use the data stored in this folder to get my PC more or less back to the state it was in before the upgrade. Certainly in the case of certain program settings that I had spent ages tweaking under XP.
OP, if you didn't understand a word of that or still have no idea where to begin, it's best you get someone to do it for you.
Microsoft are offering the Windows 8 Upgrade as a download for £25 until January next year.
Also you are not required to do a clean install with the Win8 upgrade (although you can if you like). You can upgrade from within XP and keep your files, but you'll need to reinstall your programs yourself afterwards.
Not every XP computer can be upgraded to 8 though. Microsoft has dropped support for older processors and motherboards that will quite happily run 7, so it's important to run the free Upgrade Assistant first.
If you click the download link on the page I've linked to the first thing it will do is download the Upgrade Assistant, before you have to pay anything.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows/buy
ETA: That's not the same Upgrade Advisor that you'd use to go to Windows 7. You can get that here.
It doesn't unless you choose to format. By default it saves documents, profiles and program data in "windows.old".
If you really want to you can do an in-place upgrade from XP to Win7 - by upgrading to Vista then upgrading that to Win7. You don't need to activate the Vista so you can use a borrowed disk - just do the Win7 upgrade within 30 days.
It's really not recommended but it does work, and could be a lifesaver if there's some installed software you've lost the CD for and really need to keep.
Plus any in-place upgrade is a bad idea. So two in-place upgrades .... plus one of them involves Vista .....
One wonders about the wisdom of such a suggestion.
I generally agree with you, though you probably can do the series upgrade, as the requirement for the Win 8 upgrade is to have Win 7, Vista or XP on your machine and it doesn't seem to specify that any upgrade must be directly from XP or Vista, to 8.
But you'd lose so many programs and services along the way due to incompatibilities, that you'd lose the main reason for doing the upgrade series in the first place.
Better to retain XP as it is for use in case of need, and install 8 on a new drive or partition, it should automatically set up a dual boot menu with XP. Then, gradually install your most often used programs in Win 8 leaving the incompatible ones and/or least used ones in Win XP. Anyway, that's what I've done and within a month or so I'm already spending most of my time working in Windows 8 (but none of it in Metro :cool:).
Another issue is that if you do move from XP to 7 some software you have may never load onto Windows 7 as it just throws its hands in the air and claims its incompatible when you try.You can try running it in compatability mode for XP but often it still refuses to install it. I understand 7 professional gives more options to run programmes asin XP, so it may be a case of checking first what problems there may be, and which version of 7 might cope with them. I have a heap of XP games and my genealogy software - which did work on vista - all refusing to install on 7 and most don't have download patches or patches to anything beyond vista to get them working.
Yes - twice on work PCs where there was no alternative. (in-house apps with long-lost installation source)
And I did say "it's really not recommended".
I can only presume there was some finagling to get it to work.
It was a while ago -but no finagling. It's possible the PCs (Dell Vostro's) had a Vista SLIC BIOS - I really don't remember.
But anyway, there's the well-known trick of using the Upgrade version of Win7 to achieve a clean install:
1) Run setup but don't enter the licence key
2) Run setup again choosing "upgrade", then activate.
If Win7 lets you run upgrade on unactivated Win7, why wouldn't it let you upgrade unactivated Vista?
Also see this