Ever since I began playing around with the first beta releases of Windows 7 I was confident that Windows 7 would be the next operating system for my computers. I had been running Windows XP since it came out many years ago and while it was still a great operating system it missed several of the important updates that Windows Vista and now Windows 7 introduced. I quickly pre-ordered Windows 7 from the Amazon UK shop as it was much cheaper there than in my country’s Amazon shop. And since I wanted to use an English version anyway I decided to purchase Windows 7 Professional. The main reason for that edition was merely that it was the last edition missing in my collection. I had purchased an Acer Aspire Timeline 3810 laptop earlier which came with a free upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium and my attendance at a Windows 7 conference in November would supply me with Windows 7 Ultimate.
I knew that there was no direct way of upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 but since I always felt that upgrades would carry all the weight and excess of the old operating system the decision was quickly made to do a clean installation of Windows 7. The main problem with clean installs is to find a way to move the data from the old installation or computer system to the new one. I’m talking about essential stuff like documents, photos, specific applications, emails, web browser bookmarks and everything else that was accumulated over time.
The first thing that I did was to create a priority list that contained files and applications that I needed to move to Windows 7. It usually is easy enough to install the applications anew but it is more difficulty to transfer the settings and data to the new system. It is usually up to the individual to research possibilities to backup data and restore it on another computer system. It was easy enough for me as my main applications were Firefox and Thunderbird, which both could be backed up and restored easily with MozBackup. It took a bit longer to research the information for some other applications but I was eventually able to backup the data and files that I needed.
Hardware drivers were another aspect of the migration that I needed to take care of. I downloaded all relevant drivers for the computer hardware installed in my computer system. This included audio and video drivers, drivers for the network adapter, computer monitor and basically anything else that was connected to the system.
I initiated the Windows 7 installation from within Windows XP and had to select custom installation. This was outlined in a small sheet that was distributed with the Windows 7 Professional box. The installation went smoothly. It took between 30-60 minutes before the Windows 7 desktop was shown. A quick check revealed that two hardware devices were not recognized by the operating system. One of the devices was the network adapter which I was able to install with the drivers that I downloaded previously. The other devices was the Creative X-Fi sound adapter which also installed fine after supplying the drivers.
My overall Windows 7 upgrade experience was excellent. It took less than four hours to update to Windows 7 including all the preparations in the old system.
How was your Windows 7 Upgrade or installation experience? Did yours run as smoothly as mine or did you run into issues that you had to fix?
