dead simple question can I do an upgrade from win xp home edition 32 bit to win 7 pro 64 bit by using only a win 7 pro upgrade disc
the win7 upgrade disk when installing will do a scan of your hardware & windows to see if can upgrade or not.
Upgrade from XP to WIN7, or 32bit-64bit, is really a clean install so you will need to save all important files to an external drive, USB, DVD, etc. But yes you can do it by selecting the custom install option, not the upgrade option on your Win7 install disc.
What ddp and Deadrum33 say is right on the money. There's a GREAT post/blog about exactly the kind of upgrade you want to do at the URL below. The detailed instructions there are really good. http://www.winsupersite.com/article/win7/clean-install-windows-7-with-upgrade-media.aspx Just like Deadrum33 says ... copy all your important files (if not the entire drive as a .gho image file) to another drive and then start your Win7 upgrade. Everything will get blown away, but only after the upgrade process checks that you have XP installed. For Vista you can "upgrade in place," if that's what you want. Cleanlyness is next to ...
Many thanks for the info have had a quick read of the link but not fully as yet I've already made a windows easy transfer file which ends in a .mig file but not sure whats in this I do have an external hard drive that has almost 1tb of ree space so I could easily make a copy of the whole hard drive. you mention doing this with a .gho image file, probably a dumb question but what program creates and uses a gho file extension I plan on doing this on my next set of days off so many thanks for all help in advance in case I encounter problems
.gho is a nortons ghost image. You have no access to this data until you install nortons on a new machine to read it. Extra steps to do, plus you have to purchase nortons. You can use free product like EASEUS disk copy http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/feature.htm and have access to your files on any machine, instead of needing to install extra software just to see your data. I have not used it but have heard good things. All you really need is to do is save your files to your 1TB disk, but if you want a complete backup just to be safe, just clone the disk with easeus and you will have an exact copy.
