Deciphering Windows 7 Upgrades: The Official Chart

Mossblog ^ | Walt Mossberg

[Gomez]

Over the past two weeks, in my Personal Technology columns, here and here, I’ve explained some of the challenges and limitations that will be involved in upgrading an existing Windows XP or Windows Vista PC to the forthcoming Windows 7 operating system, due out October 22. Several readers asked me to publish a chart showing which current versions of Windows could be easily upgraded to which planned versions of Windows 7, and which couldn’t. So I asked Microsoft to supply such a chart we could publish, and the company graciously did so. It is reproduced below, unaltered. You can click on it to make it larger.

Common consumer versions of XP and Vista are listed down the side, and the three (out of a total of six) planned versions of Windows 7 likeliest to be used by average consumers on existing PCs are listed across the top. 

Note that ONLY those combinations which intersect in a green box saying “In-Place Upgrade” can be upgraded in a simple way that, in Microsoft’s words, “Keeps your files, settings, and programs intact from your current version of Windows.” 

All of the others, denoted by blue boxes, will require what Microsoft calls a “Custom Install,” also known as a “clean install” — a procedure Microsoft doesn’t even refer to as an “upgrade.” For most average, non-techie consumers whose PCs have a single hard disk, that will require a tedious, painful process with the following steps: temporarily relocating your personal files to an external drive or other computer, wiping your hard drive clean, then installing Windows 7, then moving your personal files back, then re-installing all of your programs from their original disks or download files, then reinstalling all of their updates and patches that may have been issued since the original installation files were released.

Microsoft will provide a free “Easy Transfer” program to assist in this process, but this software won’t transfer your programs, only your personal files and settings.

[dayglored]

> What's the deal with the "Windows 7" name anyway?

Windows 7 is NT 6.1 -- in other words, Vista with fixes.

There was a REAL Windows 7 (NT 7.0) project at Microsoft (a truly new operating system), started a few years ago. Before MSFT admitted that Vista was a failure in the marketplace, the intention was to bring out NT 7.0 around 2010-11. It was talked about but not specified too closely.

When Vista was rejected in the marketplace, MSFT had to bring out -something- immediately to replace it. And it had to have a name that was NOT associated with "Vista".

But REAL Windows 7.0 -- NT 7.0 -- wasn't nearly ready yet.

So they rev'ed Vista from NT 6.0 to NT 6.1, and stole the name of the next planned major release ("Windows 7"), to try to fool everybody into thinking it was really different from Vista.

Now, truth is, I rather like Win7. Been using it for months. I'm not knocking it one bit. But it's not a "new" operating system. It's Vista, the way it should have been two years ago.

I just wonder what the heck MSFT will do for the next major release name. It's going to be NT 7.0, but called.... "Windows 8" ???? This could get silly...

[calex59]

I don't plan on any problems upgrading to Windows7 as I plan to keep XP. Why would I need to upgrade when XP does all I ask of it and more if I wanted?

It seems to me that MS has made, once again, to many versions of their new operating system if they have to put out a chart just so people will buy the correct one. Thanks, but no thanks.

[killermosquito]

My situation is similar. Would this require a BIOS upgrade or will I simply need to change some BIOS configs?

[martin_fierro]

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

My upgrade has been smooth:

Start here

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

See #25.

[raybbr]

Can you guys help me? I am running Vista HP 64 bit on a Toshiba laptop. I use Firefox 3.5.1 to browse. So far I have only noticed this on one website - Newegg.com. When I get there, if you are familiar with their site, (all PC people should be), then you know about the pull down menus to select the sort by "lowest price", "highest price", etc. The Java has stopped working. It won't upgrade to the new criteria.

Even if I select an item and then try to go the 'specification' list it won't go.

This has only happened since the .5.1 update which, strangely enough, was to fix some Java problems.

[antiRepublicrat]

OS X on Intel upgrade chart (I think this is correct):

	10.6 Home Premium	10.6 Professional	10.6 Ultimate
10.4 Tiger	your choice	your choice	your choice
10.4 Tiger Starter	your choice	your choice	your choice
10.5 Leopard Home Basic	your choice	your choice	your choice
10.5 Leopard Home Premium	your choice	your choice	your choice
10.5 Leopard Business	your choice	your choice	your choice
10.5 Leopard Ultimate	your choice	your choice	your choice

Price: $29

Microsoft is making it far too confusing in its desire to segment the market to maximize profits.

[antiRepublicrat]

64-bit is mainly good for two things.

One, your memory limit effectively goes away. With a decent graphics card, 32-bit Windows clients in reality only give you a maximum of about 3-3.5 GB usable RAM. Plus individual 64-bit applications aren’t limited to being able to use 2 GB RAM as most 32-bit apps are under Windows.

Two, some programs written to take advantage of 64-bit will run faster. The 64-bit chip has 64-bit registers (ultra-fast local memory) instead of 32-bit, and it has double the number of registers in the core and in the SSE unit. These in themselves have shown IIRC a 20% speed bost in some games.

I haven’t verified this, but it is possible Windows itself runs faster as Microsoft probably recompiled it to take advantage of 64-bit processors.

The downsides are 64-bit programs take more memory and disk space and you may have compatibility problems with some older programs.

It also appears none of these improvements will benefit you. But then if you eventually decide to do heavy Photoshop or gaming you’re going to wish you had bought the 64-bit OS.

[antiRepublicrat]

[discostu]

I think 98 is considered a point release for 95 (so if 95 was 4.0 then 98 would be 4.5), 2000 was part of the NT chain so take that out. And then it actually works... well it does if you forget ME, which MS seems to have written out of history.

[raybbr]

Real funny. I have Mint Elyssa on an old box and if I ever get time I MAY upgrade.

[antiRepublicrat]

If you wait until Snow Leopard is out you wouldn’t have to pay the $29.

Anybody who bought a Mac since IIRC June/July gets a free upgrade.

[Mr. Blonde]

There you go, even better. Speaking of, I need to get my pre-order on at Amazon.

[papasmurf]

hah! Forget the naysayers. You CAN upgrade an RC, or even BETA, Windows 7 to the final public RTM build.

For those who have Windows 7 Release Candidate or Windows 7 Beta installed on their computers, you’ve been told that you are unable to upgrade your current pre Windows 7 RTM build: 7600.16385 to Windows 7 RTM...

I have GOOD NEWS for you!

Normally, you’ll get an error message saying you can’t upgrade. The reason is because Windows 7 RTM is programmed to reject all previous versions of 7233. Well fear not, there’s something you can do to bypass this crazieness, just follow these steps to upgrade from Windows 7 RC or Beta to Windows 7 RTM build: 7600.16385:

1. First you need to extract Windows 7 RTM ISO Image file to any folder or USB Disk using WinRAR, or the utility of your choice.
2. Now, go to the source folder, and use your text editor (notepad) to open “cversion.ini” file.
3. Change the “MinClient” build number to a value lower than the down-level build. For example, change 7233 to 7000.

The default content cversion.ini:

[HostBuild]
MinClient=7233.0
MinServer=7100.0

This is how the cversion.ini file contents should look like after changing:

[HostBuild]
MinClient=7000.0
MinServer=7100.0

4. After you finish changing it, you need to save the updated file in the same location and then run the setup.exe to start Windows 7 RC Upgrade process.
5. Now, you get an installation screen and you can choose which Windows 7 version you want to upgrade: Either the RC or Beta version.

I’ve tried this on the bootleg RTM that’s going around, and it does work. Hopefully a corporate type FReeper with a leagl RTM will do the same and report back???

[papasmurf]

See my post # 35. :)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Gloria (7) is nice...much better it seems to me...and a new KDE version is just out....bout to try it.

[RepublitarianRoger2]

Thanks!

I read about the same type of trick for upgrading from 7000 to 7048 and above (although I didn’t actually do this). I’ll give it a try when I get the RTM. Sounds pretty promising.

If I have to rebuild the whole thing, it’s not the end of the world, but it IS a major pain in the butt and a lost weekend. Such are the perils of beta software, I guess...

[papasmurf]

Not to mention, there is NO FLASH for 64 bit yet! (OK, there is Gnash for Linux, but I haven’t been able to make the Windows 64 bit build work) Therefore, you’ll be reduced to using a 32 bit browser if you want to see the content on 95% of the web.

[Arguendo]

Cool. Luckily, I think the upgrade has both 32-bit and 64-bit versions together, so if I ever do need to switch I can do so for free.