Tom's Hardware > Forum > Windows 7 > Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade
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JJDubs   08-05-2009 at 03:43:52 AM

Since there are issues with upgrading from XP to 7 the "easy" way, can I do the following?

Swap my XP drive with another (new) drive and do the clean install on the new drive with XP on the old drive?

John

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Bronze Win 7 badge Zoron   08-06-2009 at 04:33:05 AM

What exactly do you mean by the "easy" way? Yes, you can disconnect the XP drive, install Win 7 on a new drive, then reinstall the XP drive and use your BIOS boot device selector to choose which drive to boot from.

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------------------------------ Desktop: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit; Intel Q6600 CPU; E-VGA 780i SLI motherboard; E-VGA E-GeForce 8800GT; OCZ Vista 4GB dual-channel kit; Ultra X2 750W power supply; 2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB in RAID 0. Laptop: Acer Aspire 8730-6314;
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JJDubs   08-07-2009 at 03:04:33 AM

Zoron wrote :

What exactly do you mean by the "easy" way? Yes, you can disconnect the XP drive, install Win 7 on a new drive, then reinstall the XP drive and use your BIOS boot device selector to choose which drive to boot from.



By easy I meant you can't simply upgrade from XP to 7. You have to do a clean install. But the Windows 7 upgrade needs to know that XP is installed so I still would have to keep the XP drive connected, no?

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Bronze Win 7 badge Zoron   08-07-2009 at 05:06:56 AM

No, you don't have to... and while you can't do an in place upgrade, the Windows 7 setup will save all your files to a folder called Windows.old. Yes, you would have to reinstall all your programs, but your data will be intact at least. Of course, if you decide to do it that way, you should back up first anyway.

Windows 7 doesn't have to be aware of Windows XP... because new computers allow you to choose what drive to boot from using F11 or F8 or some function key... it varies by the computer / motherboard manufacturer. This means that each OS and it's bootloader can be intact on each separate hard drive.

------------------------------ Desktop: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit; Intel Q6600 CPU; E-VGA 780i SLI motherboard; E-VGA E-GeForce 8800GT; OCZ Vista 4GB dual-channel kit; Ultra X2 750W power supply; 2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB in RAID 0. Laptop: Acer Aspire 8730-6314;
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megamanx00   08-07-2009 at 05:31:37 AM

Depends on your motherboard. You'll have to install win 7 with the XP drive disconnected, but when you put it back in then you should simply be able to select which drive you want to boot from in the BIOS. The drive that boots is considered the C: drive which is important for XP. When you want to use win 7 just change the drive you're booting from in the BIOS.

------------------------------ Playing X-Men Origins: Wolverine Athlon 64 X2 5000+ @3.24 Brisbane | GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-DS4 | 4GB Mushkin DDR2 1066 | Plextor 760A| 2x 3850 512M CF| WD 1TB Black| Fortron Blue Storm II 500W | APEVIA X-Dreamer Black | Win XP Pro & Vista Buisness 32bit
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Bronze Win 7 badge Jonmor68   08-08-2009 at 02:33:53 AM

If you have an XP cd and the product code, you can install on the new hdd, start the W7 install and when prompted insert the XP cd and type in the XP Product key, then remove the disk and continue the instalation.

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JJDubs   08-18-2009 at 04:08:17 PM

Thanks. Jonmor68. This is kinda what I was hoping.

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