upgrade from XP??

[robertedmed]

Hi, i bought a useed Dell inspiron 1501 and thinking about goin to win 7. I got no disc's with it .My question is after goin to win 7 will i have a problem when it comes time to REINSTALL win 7 from the upgrade dvd,there will be no previous OS on it.

Also it has the 64 bit AMD dual core running @ 1.8ghz i believe with 2 gig ram which is shared w video.will it run the 64 bit version well???

THANKS in advance Robert...

 

[linney]

Have you run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor over the machine?

Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...90-7659-4BD9-9E51-2497C146AF15&displaylang=en

You might like to consider doubling your RAM if you can fit it in?

If you have some extra disk space or an external hard drive an image of the working operating system might be the way to go then you have a ready made recovery option {either XP or Windows 7).

This link will might give you some ideas and at least show you the link for the Windows 7 Forum.

More Windows 7 Backup.
thread1726-1584986

Clean Install Windows 7 with Upgrade Media

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp

 

[robertedmed]

yes i ran that and it shows all is Ok with the 32 bit then shows all OK with the 64 bit but say's need at least 2gig of ram (the adviser shows 1.9 is in laptop.)2 gig is the max as far as i know will check dell site for max ram..really want to upgrade to 64 bit since it has athlon 64 CPU..

THANKS...

 

[smah]

There is no direct upgrade path from XP to Windows 7.
thread1726-1583693

 

[tf1]

As said above, you cannot do an in place upgrade from XP to W7; only Vista users can do that. However, you can do a clean install (ulimately, the best solution anyway) from the upgrade disk.

Basically, you install Win7 without entering the product key first time and then run an in place upgrade from that install using the product key. This isn't as arduous as you may think as Win7 installs far, far faster than previous OSs (16 minutes from start to finish on my Desktop PC and 28 minutes on my SLOW Netbook using an external USB DVD drive).

There are plenty of step-by-step guides on the Internet on how to do this. Here's one of the best:

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp

I always find that for long-term simplicity, it is best to partition your HDD and have a primary partition for the OS and the secondary partition for all your user data (documents, music, photos and all the stuff that you need to keep). Then if the OS becomes corrupt or you want to install a different OS, you can reformat the primary partition and not have to waste time backing up all your user data first.

But note, that is not a substitute for regularly backing up your data to an external device for safety.

Regards: Terry

 

[robertedmed]

My main question is should I upgrade to the 32 bit or 64 bit version, remember Dell Inspiron 1501 AMD 64 1.8ghz dual core with max 2gig ram installed

THANKS Robert

 

[tf1]

You need to look at the Dell website and see if they have a full suite of 64-bit drivers and firmware updates to run a 64-bit OS. Then whether you take that path depends on what you normally run: do you have 64-bit applications?

You need to balance the advantages of 64-bit against the possibilty of not being able to get all the drivers you may need. And if all your current applications are 32-bit, is it worth the possible hassle?

There's nothing wrong with installing 32-bit now and then in 12 or 18-months time when you see an obvious need for 64-bit you can install it from the same disk.




Regards: Terry

 

[linney]

64-bit or 32-bit is a personal choice, on a slightly older machine perhaps 32-bit might be more "understanding", but 64-bit is the way of the future, and both Vista and Windows 7 are very suitable for 64-bit.

32-bit and 64-bit Windows: frequently asked questions

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/41531554-d5ef-4f2c-8fb9-149bdc5c8a701033.mspx