Newbie upgrade to Windows 7 from XP

welshjim22

welshjim22

welshjim22

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6 Jul 2009
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I have upgraded ram and graphics cards in the past and on several unfortunate occasions had to reinstall windows xp. However i plan to upgrade to Windows 7 when it comes out as i missed Vista. As they are not doing a direct upgrade betrween W7 and XP i need some advice. I have decided this would be a good time to expand my harddrives as i only have a 320gb 95% full and another small one for the windows xp backup. I was planning to add a third transfer the important files and such like then remove the old two and add a second new one for w7 o/s and then install w7 from scratch. I could wipe/format the old 320gb and add that instead of a second new one.

What problems am i likely to come across. I have no disc of drivers for my DVD drives or motherboard just a Mesh computers reinstall disk which i guess includes all of these plus windows.

The first upgrade comes Thursday swapping Mesh mid tower for Cooler master 690.
 
How old is it? I found W7 to be very good at identifying and downloading all the necessary drivers. Good job it had the one for my network card built in :)
 
MM i dont think u will have any problem at all getting the machione running without specific drivers unless its got some seriously old hardware in it.

Only trouble i had was i had a PCi NIX and that wasnt compatible with vista let alone win 7.

As long as your Network adapter works you will be 100% fine im sure of it.

(runs off and hides)
 
Umm, yes they do allow upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 ( I think they are now allowing as far back as Windows 2000 for upgrade purposes). However you won't be able to do an "in-place" upgrade unless you are on Vista. 90% of the drivers you would need, will already come with Windows 7 or be available through Windows Update in Windows 7. The rest can be found on manufacturer sites. If you can't find a Windows 7 specific one, you can usually use a Windows Vista one. Although this sometimes loses you newer tech features. Like with video card drivers, you lose the WDDM 1.1 memory management improvements if you use Vista drivers instead of Windows 7 drivers. You can find out more information over on TechNet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd361745.aspx and a lot of the upgrade questions in general can be answered by this wonderful article here: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/fe...de_guide_all_your_questions_answered?page=0,2
 
As far as I know if you live in the UK your cant do any upgrade do to IE not being included in the build. It would be a good move to install Windows 7 from scratch anyway so you dont get rubbish moved over from the old O/S
 
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