Does updating windows xp to 7 cause harm?

You can't update XP to Win7. They are so different that it can't be done.

He may have upgraded it, in which case he saved you some money. The effect will be the same - you just got a discount for being an existing XP customer.

In my experience there's so little left of the original that it makes little difference between upgrading or formatting out and starting again. You can actually format and then upgrade if you have the XP CD to validate your entitlement so don't be too hard on your friend.

As to your games, reinstall them and be your own judge. W7 uses memory differently and better from earlier versions of Windows - maybe you need some more.

Again, you CAN NOT upgrade XP to Win7. By "upgrade" he might have left you're old XP build active and usable by putting win7 on a different partition. But there is no way to over write the XP build with Win7 data.

We may be at cross-purposes here but when I wrote "upgrade", I meant upgrade in the sense of buying what Microsoft calls an upgrade DVD as opposed to the more expensive one you need if you don't have a valid, upgradeable version of XP or Vista.

The mechanics of that process are debateable but I'm far too agnostic to argue with the close-minded. Either way, an XP system becomes a W7 system.

Closed minded? fytb.

This does depend on what you mean by "upgrade". What you're talking about is what I call update. You used to have XP, you now have Win7. Your OS has been "updated". If however you had Vista, and used the upgrade DVD and now only have Win7, you have "upgraded".

The reason I mention this is that while some may think its ok, you need to be exact when dealing with computers. Someone else might see the first post and think they can "upgrade" from XP to Win7, only to encounter errors they didn't expect. I had XP, I bought the family pack (upgrade) and followed MSs steps on what to do. I now have Win7. (I kept my old XP just in case, but I've never booted back into once.)

Don't worry. This close minded person will let it drop and go away now.

No offence intended - my bad choice of phraseology but you did sound rather entrenched.   The point I was making, and I post this link to clarify this situation for anyone thinking of upgrading as a cheaper option than buying a new copy of W7 -

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/help/upgrad...

from which you start with XP and end up with W7 and M$ goes about that by ditching XP because technically, I assume, you have only one licence. You do need to save your personal files and data out first and will have to reinstall third party programmes but the saving is worth it. I doubt it will be available from XP to Windows 8 so it might be a bit too late to bother now.

I also want to mention that if you didn't delete any partitions or format the drive before installing, your old windows (XP) folder should now be renamed windows.old and you can retrieve files from there if needed, otherwise you can delete this folder.

You can use a upgrade DISC, but you MUST do a full reinstall. If you were going XP to Vista or Vista to 7 you can do a inplace upgrade or a full reinstall, but an upgrade disc WOULD work in both cases.

Basically, Win7 upgrade discs allow going from XP and Vista, but inplace is only for Vista. And if you're changing bit-rates (32 to 64 or vise versa) then you must do a full reinstall.