Upgrade from XP to Windows 7

[sinsi]

Just did an upgrade from xp to win7 for a guinea pig  customer.
Normally, you can't go directly xp->7 without losing your settings and apps.
There is an easy way I have found.

1. upgrade from xp to vista
2. don't give it a key
3. install vista sp1 (still without a key)
4. upgrade from vista to 7
5. activate windows with the win7 key -> success!

This was all 32-bit, not sure about x64. Might give it a go and see...

[dedndave]

i avoid "upgrade" installs like the plague   :P

[sinsi]

Well this worked without a hitch, all programs were still working, his data was still there and it's 10x faster.
He picked up win7 easily, things are different but his environment is the same.

[jj2007]

Sinsi, you are a pig genius :U

[fearless]

I went with the dual boot option, xp and win7. Found win7 explorer is really awkward compared to xp. Plus no thumbnail previews in win7 in explorer - opens some windows photo thing instead of fax and image preview, plus a few other nagging things that im used to with xp, so hence the dual boot. I tend to stay in xp most of the time as i find it easier to use and of course i have win7 for when it is an absolute necessity to move on at some point - mainly gaming, dx11 etc, that will eventually force me to start using it more in the next couple of years i suspect, but for now ill try and stick with xp for as long as i can.

[hutch--]

Funny I do much the same thing, I have an i7 Win7 64 bit box that runs fine but I am used to my XP SP3 box on a Core2 Quad and its easily fast enough so I mainly use the Win7 box to watch video. By looking around I found a set of patches so I could run WINFILE from NT4 on it so I can find my way around reasonably well but I confess I don't like the dialog boxes and the inability to set different copies of the same EXE to different file extensions.

The main thing that pisses me off with it is every time I turn it on it wants another 100 meg of crap in updates.

[dedndave]

automatic updates = off   :bg

[sinsi]

XP Pro is a little harder, since Vista needs to be Business or better. Once Vista is installed you change two registry values
which fools the Win7 installer into thinking that Vista Home Premium is installed.

Still haven't tried x64 yet, once I have a VM going I will try.

[hutch--]

Dave,

They have a trick with Win7 64 bit, if you don't enable the updates a lot of it did not work first off. Its part of why I don't use it much, I don't trust Microsoft and thats after paying over $400.00 AU for the PHUKING thing.