XP to Win7

[Merlin]

I will be updating my OS for the first time in nearly ten years from XP to Win7. Can I use the windows backup utility in XP and then restore using a utility in Win7? If this plan is not the best could someone please recommend what I should do. I suppose I could do a dual boot system for a while and move stuff over a little at a time. Any advise would be appreciated.

[Sparky]

This may help:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/wind ... y-transfer

[smack323]

I have used Windows easy transfer on about 5 upgrades to Windows 7 and it seems to work pretty well.

I think your going to really like 7.. I was content with XP forever - until I tested out 7 on a PC at home. The thing I love about 7 is everything just seems to work.. for me anyway.

[skier]

I have used Windows easy transfer on about 5 upgrades to Windows 7 and it seems to work pretty well.

I think your going to really like 7.. I was content with XP forever - until I tested out 7 on a PC at home. The thing I love about 7 is everything just seems to work.. for me anyway.

not just for you, windows 7 has substantially better pnp driver support than any other OS, in almost all cases the only drivers you will have to get are graphics, and even windows update can pick those up too

[smack323]

not to mention i had a hell of a time getting my PS3 to get movies and music from my XP systems. No matter what I did I always had some problems and gave up on it.. After installing 7 I was playing around on my PS3 one day and noticed it found all my music and movies with no configuring done on my part. It was nice..

[Darkstar]

I'm still using Win XP, and never used any other Operating system in last 9 years...
But now most of the people like to use Win 7 and in their opinion win 7 is best...
But How can Install win7???
Should I start from 32 bit???
help required...

Whats your hardware?

I buy 64 bit but because of a program that wont run on 7 (or even virtual XP mode) i install the 32 bit version with the 64 bit key. Of course to do so you have to have a 32 disk or thumb drive around with Windows 7.

Also i only do clean installs on windows 7

[smack323]

I would go with a 64bit version of windows 7..

1)get a copy of windows 7
2)put DVD in your DVD drive and reboot PC, when rebooted the OS should start the install. follow the prompts.

[Velo:Sity]

And don't forget to copy personal files you will need to another drive like flash. When installing you will probably want to format the drive, which erases all the data.

[smack323]

yes as was mentioned to Merlin earlier- windows easy transfer is a good option to use to migrate your data from XP to 7

[Major_A]

I'm still using Win XP, and never used any other Operating system in last 9 years...
But now most of the people like to use Win 7 and in their opinion win 7 is best...
But How can Install win7???
Should I start from 32 bit???
help required...

Whats your hardware?

I buy 64 bit but because of a program that wont run on 7 (or even virtual XP mode) i install the 32 bit version with the 64 bit key. Of course to do so you have to have a 32 disk or thumb drive around with Windows 7.

Also i only do clean installs on windows 7

He's trying to advertise some business, look at his signature.

On topic, I think Acronis has the ability to backup applications and other stuff to make the switch easier. For what you are doing you could get away with just using the demo version of the software.
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/pr ... index.html

[Kaos Kid]

I have two SATA drives in my videdit rig. One is the original I had XP-32bit on. Tho other I dual-booted XP-64 and Win7-64 on. My mobo allows me to switch boot drives in the bios, so when I want to boot to XP-32 (most of my hardware is older and doesn't have drivers for XP-64 or Win7) I can just point to that drive to boot from first. On the dual-boot drive, I installed XP-64 first and then Win7-64 so if I boot to that drive, I get a screen that asks if I want to boot to the earlier OS (XP-64) or to Win7. I have decided that the XP-64 bit is useless, only good for reading 4+ GBs of memory but has little drive support for even my older hardware. My capture card is older and only works on XP-32 so I figure on keeping that O/S for capturing and then switching over to the Win7-64 to do any actual editing and reencoding (bringing all my installed memory into play). This is strictly for capturing in real-time from an older analog Sony Handycam Hi-8 that I have some older family vids on. My newer camera (SD1100IS) takes decent 480 video .avi clips that will transfer straight from the SDHC card or through USB cable so once I get all my old vids captured from the Hi-8 I will probably not need it again, that is why I don't feel the need to get a new capture card that works with Win7.

I find that I still need the XP-32bit because not all programs work in the XP mode in Win7. Would I be better off:

1) Keeping WinXP-32bit on the first drive and just re-installing Win7-64 on the second drive (eliminating the XP-64 entirely) and then just selecting in the bios which I want to boot to?

or

2) Dual-booting XP-32 and Win7-64 on the same drive and then selecting the OS I want at start-up

The biggest plus I see with going with option 1 is that both OS's stand alone and if I remove one of the physical drives the other will still boot. The drag with dual-booting from separate partitions on the same physical drive is that some boot files (bootloader?) for Win7-64 will still reside on the WinXP-32 partition so if I ever have to mess with that I would also have to reinstall Win7-64 again, wouldn't I?

I just got my X6 1100T so I figure I will do an O/S tuneup and reinstall on it while I'm at it to give it a fresh new start.

As always, thanks for the advice.

[smack323]

do you have access to VMware? I would just make a VM of your 32bit system. download VMware player for free to run it.

[Kaos Kid]

I'll admit that I am ignorant when it comes to vmware, I have never used it nor had a virtual environment of any kind. I have tried the XP emulator in Win7 though and my capture card hardware drivers as well as a few other proggies I like don't/won't work with it.

[Major_A]

Best free virtual machine I've played with is Oracale's (formerly Java).
http://www.filehippo.com/download_virtualbox/

[smack323]

there you go.. give that VM a try - if its anything like VMware it should be pretty intuitive to set up a test XP box. its free and you will know if your stuff will work with it. its not an emulated XP environment its actually XP running so I would think it would work.

[Kaos Kid]

Update

I've been playing with the virtualbox vmware for the last two days installing XP Pro SP3 on it in my Windows 7 univironment. The drivers and software needed to run my Leadtek tuner/capture card won't install because in the VM install device manager doesn't see it as a multimedia device, but as a base system device (although in Win7 proper device manager shows it as a multimedia device). I haven't been able to force it to accept the Winfast drivers/suite at all. I tried both the latest at the Leadtek site and the original install disk that came with it, no go to either one.

Tried VMware 7 workstation, same results. The PCI card is not really recognized in the virtual device manager so drivers will not load/install whether from the original disk nor the latest from Leadtek site.

I guess I'll just wipe the XP-64 partition and install XP-32 on it, then cross my fingers that the W7-64 install is still recognized.

Or, will it work (better, or even at all) to install W7 in the first partition and then install XP-32 in the 2nd partition?