Using an oem disk to upgrade from xp pro to w7 pro

I have had mixed results with this.

The copy of win7 that I got from the University i go to was an upgrade disk that could run on its own. (It was very weird as you had to install win7 with the disk, then upgrade win7 with the disk to make it legit)

However I have done some trouble shooting for people before and have found that an upgrade will only work from inside windows. So you have to run windows then pop the disk in and the upgrade will take over from there but you cannot boot to the disk and then do an "upgrade".

If you have an upgrade disk my advice would be to install xp pro on the empty drive first, then from your fresh copy of win XP do the win 7 upgrade. Not the quickest process I know but that is how the upgrade version of win7 was designed to work so it should be less fussy doing it that way.

Good Luck

if you have the full version do a clean install, since you cannot upgrade from XP to Win7.

during the upgrade process from XP to Win7 you will be ask to backup you data and then Win7 will perform a clean install. It will not keep any under XP install software.

^ +1

Thank you Emerald I completely forgot that you cannot upgrade from XP to win7.

you can, you need to install win7 with upgrade medium now you have 2 choices

1, if you had a hard drive in computer with xp on it when you booted from install disk you can activate as normal

2. if that is not the case then an easy fix is a registry hack

step 1 install windows 7 from disk (upgrade disk)

step 2 download this file "http://www.sevenforums.com/attachments/tutorials/32851d..."

run it, open run comand (hold start butten on keybaord and press r) type cmd and click ok

type slmgr -rearm

when its done click ok and restart

here is guide

http://www.sevenforums.com/327722-post61.html