Ok, you may notice the promotion on windows 7 for students on the general forum, and I want to upgrade to it so my question is this.

Should I back up all my important stuff?

My hard drive is partitioned so the computer thinks i have two hard drives, ones for my C drive where everything installs to, and the other is for Music/Videos/Backed up files. So I guess the only thing im worried about is if it will do anything to my partitioned drive that holds all my media.

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I use the same setting on my PC and whenever I reinstalled the operating system it remained intact. On every installation you are asked to what partition do you want to install. The only thing you must take care of is that your disk is NTFS formatted because WIN 7 only runs on NTFS while XP could run on FAT32

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There is no upgrade from XP to 7. You will have to buy a full copy of Windows 7 and reinstall everything. I just upgraded to the official release candidate and so far really enjoy the upgrade.

GOA.Luke*BK*

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Sorry to contradict you Luke but you CAN upgrade from XP to Win7.

But the process SUX!

You will be better off backing up everything and perform a clean install of XP and then run the Win7 upgrade.

Unfortunately you will need to reinstall all your apps again.

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Correct. You can upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7. This is done through the custom install menu in the Windows 7 installation. You must first migrate any programs, files, and documents to a safe location such as an external hard drive before you do so. This should be a clean install of Windows XP tho, not your original. This can be a pain but it will ensure that your operating system installs properly.

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BUT......you can only do an upgrade with a licensed copy of the Windows 7 OS. This cannot be done using the Release Candidates or Beta versions. I have included a link below for some upgrade and migration pointers.

Windows 7 Upgrade and Migration Guide

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Sorry maybe I was not clear. You can install windows 7 on an XP box. What you can not do is have Windows 7 move all your files and programs for you form my understanding.

GOA.Luke*BK*

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Correct good sir!

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Dido that sir!

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Ok, I'm getting some conflcting answers so I'll make myself a little clearer.

- Microsoft is offering a windows 7 upgrade for student for a limited time price of $39.99 Canadian.
- My hard drive is partitioned into two drives, "C" drive and "M" drive, The C drive is the main drive, while the M drive is for my media and a few backed up accounts (ie. gaming profiles)
- My computer is currently running Windows XP Home SP3
- I already read the faq and I know I can upgrade from XP to W7, and I realize I have to do a clean install.
- Is it the same process as reformatting?
- Will it affect both drives, both C and M?
- Other than my stuff in the M drive, what type of things should I backup?

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bump

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For purposes of this discussion, a clean install--or what Microsoft calls a custom install--is when you boot your PC with Windows 7 Setup media (typically a Setup DVD, but with this version it could also be a specially created, bootable USB memory device containing the Setup bits) with the intention of installing just Windows 7 on the PC. There could be a previous version of Windows (XP or Vista) installed on the PC already. You will either install Windows 7 to a separate partition or will wipe out the previous Windows version during Setup. If it's the latter, please--please--be sure to backup all your data first. Please.

A clean install with Upgrade media is just what it sounds like: You will perform a clean install of Windows 7 using an Upgrade version of Windows 7, instead of the so-called (and more expensive) "Full" version. Upgrade versions of Windows 7 are far more common than Full versions, both because they are less expensive and because Microsoft offered (and in some cases is still offering) exceptionally cheap pricing on Upgrade media.

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I think what he is asking is will it only wipe the C drive ( it will)  it will still see the M drive but not wipe it. That is the whole reason for a partition.

Partitions have nothing to do with windows installs. They are simply storage areas. When you install windows it does not break partitions. It simply over-writes the system files for the operating system, usually in C:/windows of your computer.

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That is correct. Your other partition will not be affected. Even tough it is  the same hard drive partitioning separated it and it is seen like two disks by windows. For example:   your system partition gets corrupted and it is unable to boot you could still save your data from other partition by connecting the hard drive to another PC. That is why partitioning was created.

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