Windows XP to Windows 7 Upgrade
Last night I upgraded my custom built desktop PC from Windows XP to Windows 7. Here is how it went.
Backed up all my data to an external USB hard drive and did it again to an external SATA connected drive. Never hurts to have too many backups. My 640 GB hard drive is partitioned into a 100 GB system drive and 540 GB data drive, where I keep my music, photos, and home videos. This allowed me to perform the upgrade without having to copy all my data back over afterwards, though I had backed it up just in case.
Got the email from Microsoft with my product key and the download location around 11am CST. I had preordered Windows 7 Home Premium a few months ago when they offered it for $50.
Downloaded the 64 bit ISO.
Burned ISO to DVD.
Put DVD in while booted into XP, got message that XP cannot be upgraded to 7 via the GUI, and I would need to reboot and perform a clean install (which I knew).
Rebooted. Got into Windows 7 setup. Formatted system partition. Performed install of OS.
Install doesn’t tell you how far along it is as it goes, which is a little disheartening, but similar to the experience I had when I installed the RC a few months back. Took about 30 minutes from bootup to being at the desktop.
Drivers for all hardware was configured except for my wireless NIC.
Downloaded drivers from Linksys on wife’s Macbook Pro and burned them to CD (left my jump drive at work).
Tried to run setup of drivers and it failed numerous times. After troubleshooting for a while, solved the issue by manually installing the drivers through device manager and skipping the Linksys application install.
Connected to wireless network, ran all updates, installed all applications, imported music, imported photos, and job was done.
In summary, the install and setup was pretty easy. I would imagine that if you know how to back up all of your data, installing a clean copy of Windows 7 is something that most people could probably do on their own. The wifi NIC install was frustrating, but that was not necessarily the fault of Microsoft – Linksys’s install application should have worked better. I didn’t notice any time that the install checked for a valid copy of Windows, so I think that anyone could just purchase an upgrade copy of Windows 7 and so long as you do a clean install, it will work. If you’re interested in saving a few bucks.
As far as the OS itself, while there are some visual changes about, the core location of most settings remains the same. I didn’t have to spend a lot of time figuring out where things were, and the option to load Control Panel on the desktop is a nice touch. The OS doesn’t run any faster than XP did, at least not as far as I can tell. The time it takes to select which user to login to being fully ready to work seemed a bit quicker, but shutdown wasn’t any faster than with XP. I don’t like the way the new taskbar works, but I suppose I’ll have to get used to that.
All in all, upgrading from XP is not necessary, but if you’ve got recent hardware and an extra hundred bucks or so, it’s probably not a bad idea to upgrade. Otherwise, you can just wait until you buy/build your next PC.
Related posts:
- Should I upgrade to Windows 7 from XP? The talk around the blogosphere until the past month or...
- How-to: Will my computer run Windows 7? Most people will likely get their copy of Windows 7...
- Windows 7 First Impressions This won’t be a full-on review of Microsoft’s latest Operating...
- Why do they call it Windows “7″? Microsoft’s latest Operating System, dubbed Windows 7, will make it’s...
- Windows 7 and OSX Snow Leopard Compared Apple has released new versions of their OSX Operating System on an...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.