Hi,

So I'm thinking of upgrading my PC from Windows XP to Windows 7 in order to play some of the newer games, however, I've got a couple of  questions for anyone that's done this before;

Everywhere says I need to do a custom install, which in essence would erase all my files etc., however, some people claim to have kept all of their files in a windows.old folder, is this true?

Following the previous question, people have said that you don't need to click the custom install option, you can click the upgrade option (Which is intended for Vista > 7 upgrade), and when the error message or whatever appears, you can just ignore it and it still works while keeping your files, is this true also?

The reason I'm asking is because I have a 1TB HDD on this machine, over 400GB has been used so far, and I don't have any external HDD, just some USB drives which are 4GB each (Got 3, lol...) and I'd rather not lose all of my music files, images, work files, films etc. etc.

Thanks to anyone that can answer, I'd prefer more than one answer on this actually.

I know installing Vista over the same version of Vista put everything in a Windows.old folder for me, but not sure if that happens with 7 over XP.

If you're not sure then partition the disk into (say) two 500GB partitions, install 7 on the new one (and leave XP and your files on the other one) then transfer files across in 7's Explorer.

I forget the options it gives you when at the install screen, but you can get it to install on the same partition and it'll move all of your Windows XP files into the Windows.old folder.

It does the Windows.old for XP as well.

Do not upgrade.

If you want Windows 7 then do a fresh install. There are all kinds of bugs associated with upgrading and Windows-centric forums are filled with people who upgraded and suffered random crashes, BSODs, and other failures... none of which you get with a fresh install of Windows 7.

A 500 GB HDD is pretty darn cheap these days ($50-$60) so just snag one and backup your files. Besides, an extra 500 GB is always handy.

If you have Windows XP 32bit and want to install Windows 7 64bit you need to do a fresh install.

If you want to use it as a gaming system, then 64bit is almost required nowadays.

This guide will show you how to do it (Dual Boot) with Windows XP installed first.

Once you have dual boot set up, you can always just move your data files to the W7 partition, delete the XP partition and remerge the partition.

Btw, I end up getting between 4-9FPS difference in XP favor over W7 (unless you go over 4gb of RAM since XP64 is terribad)

Or partition. That will give you a fresh install but not require the extra HDD.

XP usually takes up the whole partition (unlike Linux's customizable / sizes) which means he we would need to shrink the XP partition.  I've seen cases where partition shrinking results in anything from damaged system files (very bad) to bizarre glitches (still bad) so I am not personally comfortable with it.  Granted this was a couple years ago and partition software (probably) has improved since then.

Still, I'd only recommend shrinking a partition when you can make a full backup of that partition just in case.  And, of course, if he could make a full backup of the partition then he wouldn't need to shrink/split it in the first place.

I think the OP should really look into a backup (IHD/XHD) anyway.  Just imagine if that one hard drive died.  He'd be SOL on all his data.  Really, if his data has any meaning at all (pictures, personal writings, things you can never just redownload) then spending ~$55 to make sure he never loses it isn't a bad deal.

I got Windows 7 from XP, but I did a fresh install and backed stuff up rather than a straight upgrade (wouldnt let me do that anyway)

so far it works really well, I like the layout and feel of 7 much more than XP.