Purchase windows xp upgrade to windows 7

I have an older computer running XP, which, of course, is no longer receiving update support from Microsoft. I would like to upgrade to Windows 7. I have run the Upgrade Adviser and my computer is compatible with the 32 Bit version of Windows 7. When I look on line for Windows 7, there do not seem to be any versions for upgrade only, they all require a clean installation.

What product do I need to buy and what are the procedures for a simple upgrade from XP to 7? This thread is locked. You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread.

I have the same question Report abuse. Details required :. Cancel Submit. LemP Volunteer Moderator. There's one exception I'll make, and here's the scenario: If formatting your hard drive would cause you to lose files or software that's not replaceable, and you already have a copy of Vista laying around, and you're willing to risk the fallout, then doing a "double upgrade" might possibly make sense. But don't tell anyone that I recommend that.

Avoid the waxy buildup, install a fresh copy of Windows 7 on a newly-formatted drive, and you'll avoid a gigabyte of trouble in the long run. Now, let's move on to the two sane options above. Reformatting is a big deal. In Latin, it's tabula rasa. So before you reformat your Windows XP drive, you may wish to save applications, user data, and customized settings to be re-installed under Windows 7 later. The Migration Wizard a.

It will scan your Windows XP installation drive for things that can be migrated and show you a list of them. You can de-select things you don't want to migrate, and add things that you may be storing on other drives.

When you are ready, the wizard will compress and store all the selected things in one file on a drive of your choice. Obviously, you should choose a drive other than the one to which you plan to install Windows 7. An external hard drive, flash drive or writable DVD would do the trick. If you bought a "full" version of Windows 7, it's OK to format the drive first.

But if you got an "upgrade" version of Windows 7, Windows XP must be running when Windows 7 is installed or product activation will fail. So do not format your hard drive before starting to install Windows 7. Insert the Windows 7 DVD, start Setup, and when it asks if you want to format the target drive say "yes". The "Quick Format" option is much faster than a full format and adequate.

Setup will erase everything on the target drive before installing Windows 7, ensuring the cleanest, most glitch-free installation possible. Now re-install all the things you saved with Migration Wizard, and you're up and running with Windows 7. You may want to keep your existing Windows XP installation just as it is. Some Windows XP applications will not run under Windows 7. If you have plenty of disk space, you can divide your hard drive into two partitions and install Windows 7 on one of them while keeping the Windows XP installation intact on the other.

Then, when you boot up or restart the PC, you can choose which version of Windows to run. That's what I did on my laptop when I installed the test version of Windows 7. You will need to create a new partition on your hard drive, and perhaps resize the existing partition to make room for the new one. Terabyte Unlimited's Bootit NG utility makes this a breeze, and you can use it for 30 days free of charge.

See my related article Changing Disk Partitions for some other tips and options to help you partition your drive. Select the new partition for installation. This option will appear whenever you restart or power up the PC. Note that if you boot up your computer with Windows 7, you're not prevented from accessing the files on the XP partition.

You can simply point your program to the appropriate drive and folder to access files you need. Have you installed Windows 7 on an XP system? Thinking about it? Post your comments and questions below This article was posted by Bob Rankin on 29 Jul Posted by: Al 29 Jul If I upgrade to Windows 7 from Vista, will all of my Office Excel documents with macros still work if I send them to friends using Vista?

Posted by: Grace Miller 29 Jul Posted by: Susan 30 Jul In 1st paragraph you say: " But then under Option 1 para 3 you say: "If you bought a "full" version of Windows 7, it's OK to format the drive first. In the case of the upgrade version, it needs to inspect your hard drive to verify that you have XP, which qualifies you for the cheaper upgrade edition.

It will give you one last chance to check compatibility. If you're sure you don't need that, go ahead and click "Install now. It will ask if you want to go online and get updates. I say yes. It could save you some time later. Your computer will reboot a few times and eventually the Wizard will return, this time running in Windows 7. At this point, you'll be able to do things like set up a password, set security preferences, set time and date, etc.

Finally, you're running Windows 7! And you have device driver issues. Let's take care of that. Launch the device manager by pressing Start and typing Device Manager in the search box. If you see yellow exclamation points, those devices have driver issues. The easiest way to fix them is to double-click the item, then click the update driver button. Select Search automatically for updated driver software. If you're lucky, that will fix your issues.

If you're human and you still have a few devices with issues, try looking at the Windows 7 Upgrade Adviser to see if the device and its new driver are listed. If that doesn't work, check the manufacturer's Web site. Once you get your devices running to your satisfaction, time to install your old programs. Gather your CDs and external drives or whatever you used to store the programs earlier and get to installing.

For some programs, you might want to download the latest versions. Finally, you can restore your data. It's all there in a folder called Windows. But we don't have to mess with that, since we did the Easy Transfer Wizard earlier.