XP to 7

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George417

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Joined
Oct 18, 2009
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665
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Saginaw, Texas
I did upgrade from XP to 7, and was so frustrated I went and bought IMAC and a Mac Book Pro. I haven't looked back and don't regret it one little bit. The difference is like night and day.

Sorry to rain on the PC, but Ive had enough.

:cat::cat::cat::cat:
 

Justturnin

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Joined
Aug 19, 2011
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2,235
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Houston, Tx
I upgraded and windows 7 is fine. Only issue was Video Card compatability but that was not &'s fault it was the maker. I still have issues but each new driver gets better so I will wait it out.
 

alphageek

Former Moderator
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Jul 19, 2007
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Green Bay, WI, USA.
Although I would tend to agree with those who have said Mac (I'm not going back :) )..

If you CAN, I would strongly recommend a build of a new win7 vs a upgrade. Hard drives are cheap these days. You could build windows 7 onto a new hard drive, and keep your old one for reference. In most machines, you could put the old HD back in as a "D" drive after building win7 on the new. Then you could access files, etc.... And in a real emergency setup a dual boot to the old XP drive.
 

xxShadowxx

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Joined
Sep 11, 2011
Messages
141
mac is fine for some things, but majority of software will only run on windows
mac is also a bit more idiot proof to setup and go

xp was great and solid for its time, but with 64bit OSs out its a bit too dated to hold its ground
vista has horror stories, bad, do not touch, keep away, hahaha

7 i've installed on many computers, fresh install not upgrade version (hate upgrades)
the only issues that i ever seen over the years with 7, is when some genius mixes
their hardware wrong, and mickeymouse a dated driver, or decent hardware
but manufacturer is dumb and can't make drivers for sh*t :biggrin:
...the latter includes dell :biggrin:

in the end, the OS isnt to blame for everything, hardware mix deserves blame too :biggrin:
 

joefyffe

Passed Away Aug 19, 2018
In Memoriam
Joined
Mar 29, 2010
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Indianapolis (almost Zionsville) Indiana
I appreciate any information I can get. However with three desktops and four laptops, some of them old, (in a home environment) switching to Mac hardly seems like a budget friendly option !:redface: I haven't totaly decided yet, what I'm going to do. Actually I don't need all the computers, they're mostly left overs being used as backups. My livelyhood pretty much depends on properly functioning laptops.
 

Bree

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Joined
Jun 19, 2009
Messages
1,736
Location
Buffalo, NY
If you have mapped a drive DO NOT got to 7, because you can not map one. You can not log into the drive.

Not true. You can map network drives in Win 7, I do it all the time. Go to Windows Explorer and find Computer in the tree and right click... Map Network Drive.

They just moved it. No worries.
 

srf1114

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Joined
Aug 16, 2010
Messages
208
Location
Mt Pleasant Mi
First and foremost their is not a direct upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7. It is best to backup you data, and go with a clean install.( As mentioned Hard drives are cheap, put a new one in and save the old one.

Secondly if your XP box is too old, dont even bother with windows 7. While Win 7 will run on a single core CPU, the performance will be terrible.
Also unless your pushing 2 GB of RAM( 4+ is better), again dont bother, yes it will work. NO it will not be a pleasing experience.

Now that should eliminate most "old" machines from considering WIndows 7.

If you have a windows Vista Machine, my condolences, but yes upgrade it to windows 7, even if it doesn't meet the requirements i listed above. Windows 7 is much better than Vista, even on a single core with 1GB ram system.

Now someone mentioned that the MAc couldn't run as many programs as the PC, and to be frank that is just patently wrong. That was the case several years ago, but is just not the case now. Almost every commercially available software package is available for the Mac these days. Particularly when you point out that with your MAc set up as a duel boot system, you can run Windows 7 ( or XP or Vista) on the exact same Macintosh hardware.
If you dont want to duel boot, there is alway virtualization software. With this you can run Mac and Windows at the same time, even sharing your files between the two systems.
 

DozerMite

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Jun 26, 2007
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1,568
Why would you want to run windows on a Mac? It will have the same issues as running a PC. Windows is the problem, putting it on a Mac doesn't eliminate those problems.
 

Padre

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Dec 2, 2009
Messages
1,841
I second the clean install. I also second that if your machine is an older one, don't do it.

The problem with keeping XP is that Micosoft is no longer supporting it, so any security vulnerabilities, etc., are not corrected by the MS update anymore.

I have been using DOS based machines since 1985. About three years ago I said "arrrgh" with it and went to an Apple Imac. I liked it, but it just wasn't as crisp and zippy as the PC, so I sold it, and went back to a PC.

It's a personal choice: Apple or PC, catsup or ketchup; sweet pickles or dill pickles. Both are excellent systems.
 

Boz

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Joined
Jun 21, 2008
Messages
371
Location
St. Louis, MO.
I got fed up with Windows about 3 weeks ago when my third computer in three years crashed. I am typing this on a new MacBook Air. I had not used a Mac since 1986 and it has just got better over time. Easy to set up and with the Air it has a solid state hard drive with no moving parts not to mention fast as heck.
 

sbwertz

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May 11, 2010
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Phoenix, AZ
First and foremost their is not a direct upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7. It is best to backup you data, and go with a clean install.( As mentioned Hard drives are cheap, put a new one in and save the old one.

Secondly if your XP box is too old, dont even bother with windows 7. While Win 7 will run on a single core CPU, the performance will be terrible.
Also unless your pushing 2 GB of RAM( 4+ is better), again dont bother, yes it will work. NO it will not be a pleasing experience.

Now that should eliminate most "old" machines from considering WIndows 7.

If you have a windows Vista Machine, my condolences, but yes upgrade it to windows 7, even if it doesn't meet the requirements i listed above. Windows 7 is much better than Vista, even on a single core with 1GB ram system.

These are all very good points. There is no "upgrade" from XP to 7. You have to back up your hard drive, reformat, and install 7. Best is, indeed, to add a new, larger, hard drive as the boot drive and install the old drive as a slave, or if there is no room in the case, as an external USB drive. You will have to reinstall all your programs, even if you keep the old drive.

Another reason you don't want to put 7 on an older machine is that there are no drivers for a lot of older hardware. Bear in mind also, that some software that is made for XP will not run on 7.

If your system is running XP and not Vista, it is probably more than 3 years old, (unless you removed Vista and downgraded to XP like I did). If it is not at least a dual core processor, it is probably not going to give you satisfactory performance.

If you have a copy of Vista, you can upgrade the XP to Vista, then upgrade the Vista to 7 without having to do a reformat/fresh install. I have had mixed results with this technique, but it is worth a try if you have the Vista. If it doesn't work properly after the double install, you are no worse off than you were, you just have to reformat and fresh install 7.
 

widows son

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Jan 1, 2011
Messages
168
Location
round rock, tx
I upgraded several PC's to Windows 7 from XP or Vista. Windows 7 does task some older graphics cards and PC's. If your PC is old enough to have XP installed on it, I would consider replacing the hardware and buying a new PC with 64 bit Windows 7 and 4Gb of Ram and a decent graphics card. There are some good deals out there on new systems compared to the cost of the upgrades.

You have no choice but to clean load from XP to Windows 7.

Vista is a pain the a**. Upgrade to Win 7 is worth the time and effort.

Windows 7 or XP runs better on a Mac than it does on a lot of PC. The virtual machine on the Mac does have it's issues some peripherals.

I have looked at a Beta of Windows 8. Nothing too justify an upgrade from Win 7 to Win 8 IMHO.

Have fun and happy computing.
 

joefyffe

Passed Away Aug 19, 2018
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Joined
Mar 29, 2010
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1,316
Location
Indianapolis (almost Zionsville) Indiana
Thanks to ALL for your input. There was enough said on here, that I didn't understand, that I have once again been faced with the reality of how little I know about puters, in general!:redface: My newest and hottest and fastest XP, the only one I have ever "built from ground up" had started giving me problems so I just kinda turned it off and said the heck with it. I have turned it back on, adjusted, swapped, and removed some peripherals and it seems to be functioning adequately at this time. I think if it craps out on me, I'll just go buy a new tower and start from there. What bugs me is I have a new Windows 7 software package {upgrade for 3 machines) that has been opened, the book partially read and the disk never spun. It will probably wind up in private classifieds for about 50 bucks plus shipping. Once again, thanks to all for your input!!!:)
 

76winger

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Aug 30, 2009
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Lebanon Indiana
Unless you your PC is fairly new, say 2 years or less, and has or can be upgraded to more than the minimum stated hard drive and memory requirements, I wouldn't upgrade from XP to Windows 7. Instead I'd advise you to weigh the pros and cons of replacement with either a new machine that has Windows 7 or a Mac, whichever you believe best fits your needs.

I've seen a lot of folks recommend Macs, but I've been a Windows user since I installed Windows 3.0 on my DOS 4.0 PC back in 1989. I know windows well enough and can be short tempered enough at times that I'd probably take dynamite to a Mac trying to learn all the new ways of making the darned thing work! Probably not that extreme, but you get my point. I'm well intrenched in my use of Windows and it works for me, thus I see no need to throw out what works.

Now, my recent experience upgrading from XP to Windows 7 has been very good! In my own case, I had a 6 year old XP machine that was starting to shut itself down due to some overheating issue (I can see old macs having the problems as well). So I purchased a new, fairly low end 64 bit Windows 7 machine and got an external USB hard drive to go with it. Through a couple session (keeping the old machine up long enough to transfer files) I got all the data and "stuff" copied from my old XP box onto that external drive. After getting the new Windows 7 box set up, and my software choices installed (most of the old ones I had worked, a few were eliminated, and a few were upgraded), I then copied all my data from the external drive onto the new machine and I was back in business.

Also after the transfer, was complete I started using the external drive as a point to run my backups and save the data to. It came with a simple utility, but I like the backup program that came with Norton Security Suite, so I use it instead. If you need higher level of file protection, you might want to back up to an online servers so you have an offsite copy of your data. Mine is note that critical and this is only one of my backups, so it's all the farther I go for my own needs.

Anyway to sum up, my upgrade went well and I like the new Windows 7 and recommend it for most people.
 

eldee

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Joined
Oct 29, 2006
Messages
326
Location
Willow Spring, NC
If you are using older software or hardware, you will probably be better off installing the 32 bit version of Win 7. I run my older stuff under 32 and my newer stuff on a 64 bit machine. My laptop is also 64 bit.
 
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