As Microsoft has run out of support for Windows XP, it's time to update your old PC and install Windows 7 in its place, following this step-by-step guide . As seen, you can still download Windows 7 for free, although then you will need to buy the user license, perhaps finding it at a good price on Amazon.
Let's start by saying two important things:
First, those with Windows Vista will be able to upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 explained in this guide .
Secondly, whether you are updating from XP or Vista, it is better to make a precautionary backup of all the data and all the important things on your PC.
Installing Windows 7 can be a great inconvenience and an avoidable effort if you have a company but for home computers it is absolutely recommended .
Windows 7 is not Vista, this time at Microsoft they have done a good job and inside there is also a Windows XP mode so that all programs and drivers can work, even the old ones.
After the praise we come to the bad news: You can not really talk about upgrading to Windows 7, or Upgrade; Microsoft did not consider at all the hypothesis that a user with Windows XP could update his operating system with ease.
After downloading Windows 7, copy it to a CD or DVD (you can also copy the Win7 installation files to a USB stick as described on another page).
With Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor you can see if you have all the requirements keeping in mind that it takes at least 1 Gb of Ram and at least 16 Gb of disk space.
The possibilities to install Windows 7 are basically three :
1) Save all data and documents, photos and many other things on an external hard disk, format the PC by resetting it and install Windows Seven from scratch by copying then saved documents.
This is the cleanest but perhaps most traumatic option.
Since you can use Virtual PC on Windows 7, you could save your Windows XP on a virtual PC and reuse it later, as indicated in another guide.
2) Install Windows 7 on a different partition of the hard disk keeping Windows XP on the other.
To create a new partition on your hard disk you can use free programs similar to the famous Partition Magic (commercial).
After creating a new partition, you install Windows 7 from scratch and keep XP on the other fully functional by creating a dual boot on your computer.
Dual boot means that on power up, a menu appears where you can choose which operating system to boot.
After creating the dual boot, you can, from Windows 7, use the Easy Transfer utility which creates a program to be used on Xp with which you can import all the data you want.
Once you are sure that nothing is needed on the xp partition, you can delete it forever.
This procedure is the best, the cleanest, the most prudent and the most recommended by experts but you need a large hard disk.
3) The installation covered by this guide is the most painless from the point of view of stress, time and fatigue and, in the test I did, I could say that it worked perfectly, without leaving any train and no problem.
It is a matter of installing Windows Seven from Windows XP using the easy transfer and the setup with upgrade, without formatting manually.
Before proceeding with the guide you must have an external hard disk or a USB stick with at least 8 GB of space or, at the limit, you can use another computer connected to the network.
1) Download Windows 7 (as mentioned in the version chapter, I recommend Windows Ultimate which has all the languages, including Italian and all the functions).
2) Open the ISO with a program to mount ISO.
3) With Windows Explorer, you have to navigate through the folders, to the USB stick, enter the Windows 7 files and look for the migsetup.exe file in the Support -> MigWiz folder .
Migsetup.exe is the Windows 7 Easy Transfer utility that also starts on Xp .
4) The Windows Easy Transfer window opens.
5) Click Next and select the external hard drive or USB stick.
6) Click on the " This is my old computer " item to start scanning the files on your PC.
7) Once the scan is complete you can customize the profile (by putting the cross or not) and choose the objects to be imported on the future Windows 7 system .
8) When finished, click Next and enter your password.
9) Click Save and locate the USB drive for saving the files that are taken from Windows Easy Transfer.
10) Now, without ever turning off the computer, start the Windows 7 installation program by navigating to the root folder of the DVD in Windows Explorer and double-click on the setup.exe file.
11) Click " Custom " to run what is called " Upgrade " or Windows upgrade.
When performing a custom installation of Windows 7, the files that were used in the previous version of Windows are saved in a folder called Windows.old .
This folder can be safely removed once the installation is done to make up for space.
12) Select the partition where Windows XP is located and click Next and proceed without any interruption.
13) Once Windows 7 is installed, restart your computer, click on Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools and choose Windows Easy Transfer .
14) The Windows Easy Transfer window opens, you choose the hard disk or USB stick as before and this time you select the "This is my new computer" item.
15) Open the previously saved file which contains the data saved by Windows XP.
16) Click Transfer to transfer all the files and settings.
You can also determine which files are to be migrated by selecting only the user profiles you want to transfer.
17) Click Close after Windows Easy Transfer has completed moving the files.
At this point, we have successfully upgraded Windows XP to Windows 7 .
Before proceeding, however, I would like to keep in mind that this is not a real update, it is only a file transfer that can be done even without using Windows Easy Transfer but using a normal Backup program.
The guide allows you to keep Windows XP profiles and custom settings, however you will need to reinstall all programs in Windows 7.
I also leave the download link for Windows XP Easy Transfer which may be used to switch to Vista and which also works for Windows 7.
You can clean all files from previous Windows installations using the internal disk cleanup tool which is identical to that of Windows XP.
To close, since this is not a certified procedure and something can always go wrong, first of all, make a nice backup (here the best free backup programs) of all the important files in a separate place, perhaps using a backup software or by copying the folders of documents on an external hard disk or USB stick so at least, even if you have to reformat everything, you will not have lost anything if not a little time.
