buy a new HD and do a clean install...Back up what you need then install win 7, formatting over your current installation.
Every time I’ve dual loaded OS’s at some point one OS get’s trashed. I’d go with a clean install.
Back up what you have on there and do a clean install. Laptop will run so much better.
tech ping pls
Generally yes, backup (burn to CD/DVD, usb drive, NOT the same Harddrive) what you want to save then reformat/install W7 over XP
Caveat - not all your programs may run in windows 7, you might need new versions/patches. check your docs/ related websites for info
If you had the skills to configure a laptop with a partitioned drive and install multiple operating systems, you would have known how to answer all the questions on the upgrade.
1) Back up your hard drive (I use Acronis, but there are plenty of good utilities) to an outside source like a usb drive.
2) Upgrade the OS.
You’re better off keeping XP. There’s nothing Windows 7 can do that XP can’t. With XP you can play all your games without having to download compatability software and jump through hoops just to play. I’d give anything NOT to have 7.
You could try something like Acronis® Disk Director, which will let you boot multiple OS’s.
If you really want to think “out of the box”:
1) Remove your current hard drive and replace it with a new/blank drive.
2) Install win-7 as a clean install.
3) Put your old drive (that still has your data) in a case and make a usb-drive out of it. Example case you could use:
You can now plug your old-drive into your computer’s usb port and copy over any data you need, as you need it.
When you get all your data copied over, you can wipe the usb drive and use it for storage, or to hold backups of your laptop (because you do perform occasional backups—right?)
I went through all the trouble to setup dual boot. And then I’ve booted into XP like 3 times in the 2 years since. If you get the Ultimate version of 7 it has the ability to run a virtual XP system, so if you find something you really really need XP for (which you probably won’t) you can use that.
Be sure you know what you’re getting in Win7. I bought a new Dell desktop with Win7 this past year and wish I could go back to XP. I hate LIBRARIES with a passion!! Give me “My Favorites” all in one single place.....
I'd re-partition it to reclaim any hidden "restore" partitions from the old operating system - most notebooks have these.
Forget about a dual boot. It's just not worth the trouble. You can always run a virtual XP (or what ever your old OS was).
I was so happy to see a computer question, and wonder if there was enough interest out there that we could have a computer forum. I thought there was one, but I just looked under forums on front page and didn’t see it listed.
Rare an XP laptop is a 64-bit box with 6 to 8 GB of RAM. You can run Win7 on less, but do you want to? What is the gain? I have a few XP laptops here, and I would never even consider upgrading them. Win7 looks better and does a little more, but it does not offer anything that an XP can't do. An XP laptop will work faster if you keep it on XP. Perhaps you want to reinstall the original XP on that laptop to remove all the registry cruft and all the installed software that you do not need. But Win7... I doubt you will gain anything. Quite possibly you will lose some devices that are not supported by Win7 drivers anymore.
If you need a Win7 laptop you should consider buying a new laptop. Not only will you get the OS preloaded; you also will get a lot more hardware than you have in that old laptop, and all that hardware will work. Upgrades of old boxes are domain of geeks who have nothing better to do and who are willing and ready to receive 500 messages about compatibility issues, find and download missing drivers, and do all other geeky stuff that such an upgrade entails.
buy a new HD and do a clean install...Win 7 is a memory hog. Save yourself some computing power and stick with XP.
You just can’t load windows 7 on any notebook of without first getting all of the requisite drivers that will be needed to operate it.
Download those drivers first and put them on a thumb drive and you shoul be OK once you install them.
Definitely backup everything and do a clean install of Windows 7. I’m doing this on my home built desktop, but have to add more RAM and beef up the processor. 3GB of RAM is pretty minimum for W-7.
If I were to do it again, I'd probably consider going with a SSD, as prices on those have been dropping also...the improved performance of SSD's however come with their own potential reliability issues(perhaps more so the older versions), from what I've read anyway.
As others have pointed out, driver availability may be a show stopper. Check on the HP web site and see if they have a set of W7 drivers for your model. If not, you’re going to have to hunt them down with google for your model (assuming they even exist). This can be very, very tricky if HP doesn’t have the W7 drivers.
Windows XP became so bloated with patches and updates that it became unstable. A change was inevitable.
Win 7 is very stable and even with a Pentium 4, reasonably fast. But my previous 2 Gb of RAM had to be upgraded to 4. The integrated MB graphics is now the bottleneck of the system with the new OS.