Step By Step Windows XP to Windows 7 In-Place upgrade guide
This is a shortened version of the upgrade proceedure for those of you who clicked on the link on the “Skip the details” link at the beginning of this article.
However for those of you who are continuing with the full article there are some changes you need to know so bear with me.
Verification that the In-Place upgrade is repeatable and a big surprise secret: I decided to verify the In-Place upgrade was not a fluke. However this time I will be using the Windows 7 Professional Upgrade DVD as opposed to the full product DVD. The same steps as before will be performed one more time, but without most of the screen shots.
This time however I did not install Easy CD Creator as it was too old to make the transition from XP to Vista. I also created a 50GB NTFS C: partition to eliminate the conversion from FAT32 to NTFS issue I ran into on my first try. Also note that Norton 360 Version 4 is Beta software, so I decided not to install the beta on Windows XP but wait until after migrating from XP to Vista, more on this later. Again I started with a clean install of XP Service Pack 3 on a freshly formatted NTFS 50 GB partition. This time the cluster size was set to the default of 4KB. In my zeal to get started I forgot about all those screenshots taken during the prior effort, but then I remembered that last Image Backup taken after completing the previous In-Place upgrade. So I just simply installed Norton Ghost and used the file recovery option to restore the screenshot files to the Windows XP ‘My Pictures’ folder. Next I installed Office 2003 again to see if the “not installed for the current user” issue would repeat. Also installed Belarc Advisor and then I installed all the currently available “Critical” Windows Updates. More than 60 Windows XP updates later and a new iteration of WGA that’s a real pain I was ready to install the 20 plus Office 2003 updates. Finally I was ready to proceed. Note: Most users already have had these updates installed over time, so the up front preparation I had to do is not an issue for most of us. There is one optional update you should install as it could make the transition easier (KB971513). Needless to say this is where I made an Image Backup and you should to so you can revert back to XP should something fail during the upgrade process. The first major step is the In-Place Upgrade from Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 to Windows Vista Business Service Pack 2.
Step By Step In-Place Upgrade from Windows XP to Vista---- >