Finally Ready To Upgrade From Windows XP To Windows7. How?

You can't upgrade in place from Windows XP to Windows 7 so you have to backup all of your data, format your c: drive and install Windows 7 on it, re-install all of your applications, and then restore the data. Having an extra drive would make this process a little easier, but I wouldn't recommend installing the operating system on an external drive if its a USB drive.. if its eSATA, that might be OK. 

This is not something to rush into. You need to do some planning to make sure you've backed up all of your data because once you format the drive, the data will be gone.

first thing you need to do before anything is run this
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20

its the windows 7 upgrade advisor.

its going to tell you if your hardware will be able to find drivers for your upgrade.
like graphics card,exc.
 
like harpo said,make sure you have your soundcard driversfor windows 7,if not well then you  have a soundcard that wont work.
 
its not even worth upgrading to windows 7 if your system is older.
graphics card/onboard video card has been the one that alot of XP computers cant find drivers for windows 7 for older graphics cards.
this will cause some chaos.
 
run the advisor,it will give you a detailed list of the drivers available for you once win 7 is instaled.
it will also warn you of any potential problems with the upgrade.
 
i hope this helped.
 
Charlie Roy

If its the Win 8 interface that is putting you off there is always Classic Shell, I was using Vista 64 and skipped Win 7 completely and went for Win 8 on my new DAW, I figured no point in buying a discontinued O/S.

Be wary of Win 7 drivers in Win 8, Max should have probably said Most Win 7 drivers should work OK with Win 8

There is software that WILL permit an in-place upgrade from XP to 7 and 8

It is LapLink PC Mover Upgrade assistant for windows 7 (and windows 8).
I used it successfully to upgrade an XP fortress that was migrated from win 3.1 to 95 to 98- 2000 to XP. So there was a lot of stuff but 98% of all of it worked after upgrading without license issues. - including Sonar.

You should uninstall anti virus stuff before hand.

To Windows 7
http://ww2.laplink.com/pc...rupgradeassistant.html

To Windows 8
http://www.laplink.com/in...ws-8-upgrade-assistant

That said: I am a professional computer tech, your mileage may vary based on skill level. 

I's been a while so tech support or a pdf manual will be your best bet.
Laplink makes software for the masses to copy from here to there and have been at it for
years (decades)?.

That said. I hooked up an external drive to my xp machine and ran the software. It asked me what I wanted to migrate. I chose everything. It then created what they called was "A Moving Van" on the external drive - see, it's for the masses.

This took a while and when it was done, I took my old drive out of the computer (for safe keeping) put a new disk in and installed Windows 7 Pro. When that was done, I loaded the upgrade assistant onto the virgin windows 7 install and Performed an "Unload the Moving Van" process. This took a while too but essentially it put back my program files and all the associated registry setting as well as putting the things that were in \documents and Settings\username into the windows 7 equivalent path of \users\username\

I took a deep breath when it was done and rebooted. - Low and behold it was there. Even my control surface settings and 24 hardware ins and outs with their friendly names.

I don't recommend that you wipe out the existing drive that has your xp on it as that is wrot
with danger. Get a different drive or at least a sure fire IMAGE backup of it so you can get back if anything goes wrong.

Be sure first that you can get windows 7 or 8 drivers for ALL your hardware. Motherboard, Video, sound, lan, wifi etc first.

And if anything can go wrong, it most likely will.

:Ron