Upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7
Posted on 22. Dec, 2009 by zevmo in Technology
It is that time of the year!!!
I am doing upgrades of machines to Windows 7, and these events always bring me a lot of joy… as a person who makes money fixing problems. Man, can Microsoft make this process any more convoluted? Here I will give you some tools to make the process go smoothly (or as smoothly as it can go).
NOW, everyone knows that you cannot “directly” upgrade from XP to Windows 7. However, there are a few step you need to complete before you make the jump.
- Take a backup of your computer, using an external USB drive, and use a FREE tool like: Macrium Reflect
- Download and install the Windows 7 Upgrade Adviser to see what apps you run that may not be compatible
- Download and install Windows Easy Transfer to move your files, and whatever settings it can, over to Win7. Save this on your external hard drive.
- Go to the Windows 7 Compatibility Center and make sure your devices (like your network card) will work
- OPTIONAL: You can use a program like LapLink PCMover to migrate your programs and files over to your new machine. This has been successful for me, so it is definitely an easy option.
- Install the Windows 7 disk and run the install. Or, if you are having issues with your drive inside of XP, just restart your computer with the Windows 7 disk in the drive and you will be able to run the install that way too.
- Select “Custom (advanced)” install (because the “Upgrade” option will fail, since there is no “direct” upgrade path from XP) *MS advice below: #1*
- Select your partition (c:) that you want to install Windows 7 on. What this will do is copy your current “Windows” directory to a “Windows.old” directory to keep your “Documents and Settings” folders, etc. to migrate over, if the Easy transfer or PCMover method fails.
- Go through the install normally. (i.e., grin and bear the slow, uninformative process) *MS advice below: #2*
- Once you are up and running, go to Start-> and in the box at the bottom, type “device manager”. This will launch a list of your devices, and you will probably see a few yellow indicators. This means you have some driver problems. Double-click these items and then select, “Update Driver.” Hopefully it will find a working driver. If not, you need to go and download the drivers from the manufacturers site, or use your system disk that came with your machine (Dell, HP, Gateway, etc.)
- Now you can use either the Windows Easy Transfer file that you have on your external hard drive (by double clicking that file), or running the LapLink PCMover software.
- Download and install any applications that didn’t survive the transfer process.
That’s it!
Whew, that seems like a lot of steps. Probably because it was.
*Advice for Microsoft*:
Here is some advice for Microsoft on how they could have made this process much easier.
#1) You could have made the Upgrade Adviser, Easy Transfer, and Backup software part of the process when you first run the Windows 7 disk. Duh! It is a no-brainer. That way, if there are hardware/driver incompatibilities, you can go on the net and download them BEFORE you blow away your working (or crippled) XP instance.
#2) When you start the install process, you should give customers the ability to run a web browser and connect online. This is sooooo simple. Run a thin version of IE, add networking capabilities, and allow people to go on Facebook for an hour, for crying out loud! At least on Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, you gave us cheesy functionality slides, extolling the good news of features we will be able to use, once the upgrade was complete. Now, nada.
I hope that helped!! As long as you follow the steps, it’s easy. Good luck.
NOTE: Make sure to save your License keys for any applications you installed in XP, so if you have to reinstall the app, you can put the codes back in.
