paul, first you need to understand that there's a difference between 'upgrade your license' and 'upgrade your installation'. When you see mention of 'valid upgrade paths' or 'supported upgrade paths' such comments refer ONLY to the capacity to perform an upgrade install, leaving all your programs, data etc intact.
If you purchase a Windows 7 Pro Upgrade you get a new install key, and using it means that you have upgraded your 'license' to run Windows. Your old license becomes the 'qualifying license', and you are obligated to discontinue using it. After you upgrade your license to a Windows 7 license, your Windows XP license becomes legally voided.
XP -> Windows 7 is not a 'supported upgrade path', so that prohibits you from being able to conduct an 'upgrade install'. You can still purchase and use a Windows 7 Professional Upgrade pack to upgrade your Windows license, but you'll need to conduct a 'Custom' install when you are installing it. The 'Upgrade' installation choice will be greyed out and unusable. 'Custom' install is a clean install. You'll need to have your data backed up and your program installation media/files ready to reinstall afterwards.
If when conducting a 'Custom' install you select the drive or partition where your XP installation is located you will need to ensure that you have adequate free drive space. Your XP install will be bundled/quarantined into a WINDOWS.OLD folder, and a clean install of Windows 7 placed on the remaining available drive space. If you afterwards find that you have overlooked backing up some data or user files (how many people forget to back up their email?) you can later recover those from the WINDOWS.OLD folder. When you are certain that you no longer need anything inside that folder, from the old install, you can remove it by choosing the 'Previous Windows versions' option in the Disk Cleanup tool.
So yes. You can confidently purchase the Upgrade pack. (As long as you retain the means of reinstalling your old Windows XP. An Upgrade Pack requires a qualifying previous version to be installed on the rig when you install Windows 7. If you later need to start again fresh on a new, empty hard drive you'll need to install XP first, then install Windows 7 again.)
Proposed as answer byTechwrighterThursday, October 1, 2009 4:34 AM
Marked as answer byDale QiaoFriday, October 2, 2009 4:16 AM
paul, first you need to understand that there's a difference between 'upgrade your license' and 'upgrade your installation'. When you see mention of 'valid upgrade paths' or 'supported upgrade paths' such comments refer ONLY to the capacity to perform an upgrade install, leaving all your programs, data etc intact.
If you purchase a Windows 7 Pro Upgrade you get a new install key, and using it means that you have upgraded your 'license' to run Windows. Your old license becomes the 'qualifying license', and you are obligated to discontinue using it. After you upgrade your license to a Windows 7 license, your Windows XP license becomes legally voided.
XP -> Windows 7 is not a 'supported upgrade path', so that prohibits you from being able to conduct an 'upgrade install'. You can still purchase and use a Windows 7 Professional Upgrade pack to upgrade your Windows license, but you'll need to conduct a 'Custom' install when you are installing it. The 'Upgrade' installation choice will be greyed out and unusable. 'Custom' install is a clean install. You'll need to have your data backed up and your program installation media/files ready to reinstall afterwards.
If when conducting a 'Custom' install you select the drive or partition where your XP installation is located you will need to ensure that you have adequate free drive space. Your XP install will be bundled/quarantined into a WINDOWS.OLD folder, and a clean install of Windows 7 placed on the remaining available drive space. If you afterwards find that you have overlooked backing up some data or user files (how many people forget to back up their email?) you can later recover those from the WINDOWS.OLD folder. When you are certain that you no longer need anything inside that folder, from the old install, you can remove it by choosing the 'Previous Windows versions' option in the Disk Cleanup tool.
So yes. You can confidently purchase the Upgrade pack. (As long as you retain the means of reinstalling your old Windows XP. An Upgrade Pack requires a qualifying previous version to be installed on the rig when you install Windows 7. If you later need to start again fresh on a new, empty hard drive you'll need to install XP first, then install Windows 7 again.)
Proposed as answer byTechwrighterThursday, October 1, 2009 4:34 AM
Marked as answer byDale QiaoFriday, October 2, 2009 4:16 AM
thanks for the detailed answer, i am using windows rc on my pc at the moment but i do have my xp disk to re install xp-home. data wise there won't be any as i will just do a fresh install of xp then upgrade to win 7.
