Upgrade Preparation: The planned upgrade is to move from Windows XP Professional SP3 32-bit to Vista Business 32-bit SP2 and then finally to Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. Windows XP to Vista Upgrade paths: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/get/upgrade-your-pc-options.aspx You will notice that an “In-Place” installation option is available for XP Pro users to either Vista Business or Vista Ultimate. So this is essentially step one in choosing the In-place upgrade path to Windows 7. For this article I chose Vista Business as it provides a path to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional. For the record the only Vista media I had was a full product version, which does include the option to upgrade Windows XP. Started out by downloading and running the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/get/upgrade-advisor.aspx The advisor gave me a green checkmark on the hardware, and suggested Vista Business. Devices: Advisor found 3 issues, 1) Promise Technology PCI card that adds support for 4 additional PATA devices require a driver upgrade, 2) Motherboard JMicron GBB36X controller. 3) ICH9 chipset SMBus. The remaining 20 hardware devices required no action. Programs: Windows Messenger, minor compatibility issues. Roxio Creator 8, “Backup MyPC” feature is listed as incompatible and should be uninstalled. The problem here is there is no Add/Remove option and Roxio’s solution involves registry hacks which I did. Reran the Upgrade Advisor and the hack eliminated the problem. Before performing any major upgrade it’s always wise to backup your current operating system. If anything should go wrong you can always use the backup to get your computer up and running with Windows XP as if nothing has happened. The best backup solution is an “Image Backup” of your hard drive with the Image file stored on external media. I choose Acronis True Image WD (Western Digital edition) which is free for owners of Western Digital hard drives. However since it is for all I know is an older version of Acronis I also installed Symantec’s Ghost 14 which is supported for Vista and reported to work on Windows 7. Acronis True Image WD (Western Digital) Edition: http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp Symantec’s Ghost version 14: http://www.symantec.com/norton/ghost For the record I’m a long time Norton Ghost user but you should be aware that the trial version does not allow you to create a Recovery CD and you may need should something hiccup during the upgrade process. The alternative is to use Acronis 2010 trial version or the WD edition, both versions are not all that hard to learn and both allow for the creation of a recovery/rescue CD. Anti-Virus software, I would suggest you disable you disable the software before you start the upgrade. I my earlier article back in mid April, using the Windows 7 Release Candidate I did forget to disable the Norton 360 Version 3 AV software but had no problems with the upgrade. However you never can tell as each AV software package is different, so disable your AV software. Also for this test I disconnected the PC from the Internet. Warning: If you have XP installed on a FAT32 partition you will need to convert to NTFS format using the convert command. For specific details read the article titled: CONVERTING FAT32 to NTFS (read the details carefully). Note: For this article I choose to skip the cluster alignment process, you should not as there is a good reason involving cluster sizes. http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php OK, it’s time to start the upgrade process so let get going ---->