Easy way to upgrade from XP to Windows 7 or 8?

Post #388,326 by hnick 4/8/14 7:07:49 PM Reply	Easy way to upgrade from XP to Windows 7 or 8? One of my wife's friends in the village has a couple of XP machines that she uses for her business. She would like to upgrade to a supported (Windows)OS. Is there a good upgrade path? I seem to recall that there was not. If one is to do this what is the best way? Any suggestions, links, pointers would be appreciated. I'm likely to get tagged with this one way or the other... "Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable." ~ AMBROSE BIERCE (1842-1914)
Post #388,327 by Another Scott 4/8/14 7:22:20 PM Reply	Not exactly. One can't simply install 7 or 8 over XP and have all the previously installed programs "just work". They'd most likely have to be reinstalled on the new OS. http://windows.micro...indows-7#T1=tab01 My step-mom just got an iMac and is in the process of transitioning over to it (with the help of a Win7 VM running on Virtual Box) because she didn't want to move from XP to Win8.x. There apparently is some magic that VMWare and maybe Parallels can do to run a real Windows install. It would probably not be supported to keep XP for VMWare (or Parallels) and also install Win7 - you'd have to check. And some unsupported hackery apparently can be done to try to get VirtualBox to run a real Win install - https://www.virtualb...i/Migrate_Windows - but I'm not brave enough to try it. Given all of the things that can go wrong with installing Windows under the best of circumstances, it probably will save time and aggravation to just back everything up and do a fresh install of 7. It's around $135 at Amazon (for the OEM version). The "Custom" install of 7 or 8 over XP apparently would still require a lot of manual intervention (to move stuff out of "Windows.old" to where it needs to be, so it might not save any time. See the MS linky above. HTH a little. Good luck! Cheers, Scott. (Who is considering moving from Win7Pro-32 to Win7Pro-64 and will have to do the same thing.)
Post #388,337 by hnick 4/9/14 5:25:58 AM Reply	Thanks! I rather expected something like that. If she has older POS software that hasn't been updated, there may be a driver issue. I've also used the virtual XP they have for Win7 which also is a PITA if you are sharing Bluetooth or serial communications. Oh well... It's Windows. Thanks again. "Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable." ~ AMBROSE BIERCE (1842-1914)
Post #388,341 by scoenye 4/9/14 8:06:38 AM Reply	POS? What kind of terminal? http://redmondmag.co...dded-support.aspx Windows XP Embedded is not out of support yet. The boot splash screen shows if you have one of those or not.
Post #388,376 by hnick 4/9/14 4:29:12 PM Reply	Don't know. I think she has some POS software that handles credit cards and keeps tax records and such. I don't think she has a dedicated POS system. "Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable." ~ AMBROSE BIERCE (1842-1914)
Post #388,340 by scoenye 4/9/14 8:00:44 AM Reply	A bit of warning about the OEM version It gets tied to the motherboard it is first activated on. If the machine dies, you lose the license unless it is transferred to one with an identical motherboard. The hassle running Windows in a VM stems from the same source: the license key wont activate because the virtual hardware does not match what it was tied to. The full retail version should work without issues.
Post #388,343 by Another Scott 4/9/14 8:16:10 AM Reply	Ah. Thanks very much.
Post #388,350 by pwhysall 4/9/14 10:55:58 AM Reply	Use the migration tool, then nuke & pave Worked like a charm when I took my in-laws' elderly Dell PC from XP to 7.
Post #388,377 by hnick 4/9/14 4:30:24 PM Reply	Re: Use the migration tool, then nuke & pave Cool, thanks. "Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable." ~ AMBROSE BIERCE (1842-1914)

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