Migrating from Windows XP 32-bit to Windows 7 64-bit

Daave wrote:
Correct. If you are interested in configuring a dual boot, you need to
use different partitions.

Do you want to configure a dual boot? Or do you merely want to "migrate"
(which is what is in the Subject line)?

Well, I want to really migrate, but I want to have XP around temporarily
as it was, so I can properly migrate things over.

Yousuf Khan

Peter Foldes wrote:
If you purchased from Technet then you did not download the ISO media.
Why not?


That I did, but that's not physical media (until you burn it). The
previous responder said that a card came with the disks that explains
all of this. I obviously did not get that card, since that was not part
of the download.

Regardless, if the card was the same as that video, it's too generic. I
need to know what gets saved and what gets erased, and what becomes
inaccessible after upgrade, etc.

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote:
Daave wrote:
Correct. If you are interested in configuring a dual boot, you need
to use different partitions.

Do you want to configure a dual boot? Or do you merely want to
"migrate" (which is what is in the Subject line)?

Well, I want to really migrate, but I want to have XP around
temporarily as it was, so I can properly migrate things over.

If you do indeed want to migrate, you need to copy all your data to a
safe location and make sure you have all the installation media for all
your programs (you may need new installation media since you are moving
to a new OS *and* different architecture (64-bit). Then I would wipe the
hard drive and perform a Clean Install of Windows 7. It's not like you
are going to have a partition for programs. I hope by "things" you mean
data!

If you do have a partition for data only, you may certainly keep that
and just wipe the partition that contains XP and the programs installed
on it (if that is your current setup). Then format that partition and
install 7 on it and then later the programs.

If you want to configure a dual boot and keep that indefinitely, then
you may create a new partition for Windows 7.

On Feb 14, 8:52*am, Yousuf Khan wrote:
Got an existing PC that is 64-bit compatible, but I've been running
32-bit XP on it for ages. Now it's getting time to leave the XP behind.
Didn't bother with Vista, like most people. I'm going to be going to Win
7 Ultimate 64-bit. Now, I'm aware that there isn't any official
migration path between XP and Win7, and especially not between 32-bit
and 64-bit.

What I need to know is if I install Win7 to the same partition as XP,
will it overwrite XP, or will it install to a different directory? Or do
I need to install to a different disk or partition? I'm asking if it's
possible to dual-boot between them?

I have completed a dual-boot and I am working on the migrations. The
best way to do this is to set up a new internal hard drive. This will
then allow to to "fix" the Windows 7 as the newer boot drive, with the
Windows 7 install DVD "repair" features.

One important software to consider is EasyBCD. This software will
allow to to "adjust" the newer Windows 7 (or Vista) BCD records.

Timely message.

I just installed Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit on an older XP-Home machine.
The old windows directory was saved under windows old and the data stayed on
the data portion of the HD.

But here is my twist. That Win7 CD is for a different computer, and I want
to "roll-back" to XP Home. Well, perhaps I ought explain what happened.

The machine became corrupted by a virus, went into continuous reboot mode,
and would not work in any way shape or form. After trying Kaspersky and
BartPE to get a functioning machine and getting nowhere, I loaded the Win7
DVD.

Everything works like normal. The PCI Wireless card didn't, I had to go to
Wal-Mart for a $35 USB wireless device, but - like I said. You'll be fine.

My problem is that I have about 20 days left to "activate" Win 7 which I
don't plan on doing. I'm going to roll back to XP.

But, while the machine allows me to boot into either my old OS (XP), Windows
7, or Windows 7 safe mode (or command line or something Windows 7ish), I
can't get into the XP directory without a password!

Anyone have any good suggestions for getting past that Admin Password to
reinstall XP? I tried the password that was on XP and that wasn't it....

So, Yousuf (Cat Stevens - is this you?), it will all work. However I have
another problem on my hand.

And yeah it is odd that Windows 32 bit is sitting there right next to
Windows 64 bit. And everything is "pretty" accessible.


"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
...
Peter Foldes wrote:
If you purchased from Technet then you did not download the ISO media.
Why not?


That I did, but that's not physical media (until you burn it). The
previous responder said that a card came with the disks that explains all
of this. I obviously did not get that card, since that was not part of the
download.

Regardless, if the card was the same as that video, it's too generic. I
need to know what gets saved and what gets erased, and what becomes
inaccessible after upgrade, etc.

Yousuf Khan

On Feb 15, 2:34 pm, "ng_reader" wrote:
Timely message.

I just installed Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit on an older XP-Home
machine.
The old windows directory was saved under windows old and the data
stayed on
the data portion of the HD.

Okay, that's good, that's the kind of thing I wanted to know. So the
Windows directory got saved, what about the "program files" directory,
and the "documents and settings" directory? Did they also get backed up?

Also did you have to install from within Windows, or did you have to
boot from CD and install?

But here is my twist. That Win7 CD is for a different computer, and I
want
to "roll-back" to XP Home. Well, perhaps I ought explain what happened.

The machine became corrupted by a virus, went into continuous reboot
mode,
and would not work in any way shape or form. After trying Kaspersky and
BartPE to get a functioning machine and getting nowhere, I loaded the
Win7
DVD.

So I assume it got infected under XP rather than Win7?

Anyone have any good suggestions for getting past that Admin Password to
reinstall XP? I tried the password that was on XP and that wasn't it....

Here's the Microsoft official method:

How to log on to your Windows XP-based computer if you forget your
password or if your password expires
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321305

Here's a bunch of others, most seem to be password crackers:

win xp admin password reset - Google Search
http://www.google.ca/search?q=win+xp...ient=firefox-a

So, Yousuf (Cat Stevens - is this you?), it will all work. However I have
another problem on my hand.

No, actually I may be dating myself here, but I've been Yousuf longer
than he's been Yousuf. He's been around on Earth bit longer overall, but
not as Yousuf.

And yeah it is odd that Windows 32 bit is sitting there right next to
Windows 64 bit. And everything is "pretty" accessible.

I'd like to make the migration even simpler by using this utility:

Upgrade XP to Windows 7, hassle-free — Zinstall
http://www.zinstall.com/

I've been carrying out an email conversation with them, and I asked them
whether I should be making a dual-boot out of this thing, and they said
specifically, "no, install it over top of the existing XP". So this may
explain how they do it. It doesn't matter, I've managed to make a clone
of my boot disk onto an external eSATA disk now, and I can conceivably
go either way now, installing it overtop or dual-booting, both options
are now available to me.

Yousuf Khan

smlunatick wrote:
I have completed a dual-boot and I am working on the migrations. The
best way to do this is to set up a new internal hard drive. This will
then allow to to "fix" the Windows 7 as the newer boot drive, with the
Windows 7 install DVD "repair" features.

In what way are you "repairing" Windows 7? Are you saying that Windows 7
has migration tools to move applications over from XP, i.e. "repairing"
in that way?

One important software to consider is EasyBCD. This software will
allow to to "adjust" the newer Windows 7 (or Vista) BCD records.

Is this a boot selector? I already have grub with my Linux install.

Yousuf Khan

"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
...
On Feb 15, 2:34 pm, "ng_reader" wrote:
Timely message.

I just installed Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit on an older XP-Home
machine.
The old windows directory was saved under windows old and the data
stayed on
the data portion of the HD.

Okay, that's good, that's the kind of thing I wanted to know. So the
Windows directory got saved, what about the "program files" directory, and
the "documents and settings" directory? Did they also get backed up?

Also did you have to install from within Windows, or did you have to boot
from CD and install?

But here is my twist. That Win7 CD is for a different computer, and I
want
to "roll-back" to XP Home. Well, perhaps I ought explain what happened.

The machine became corrupted by a virus, went into continuous reboot
mode,
and would not work in any way shape or form. After trying Kaspersky and
BartPE to get a functioning machine and getting nowhere, I loaded the
Win7
DVD.

So I assume it got infected under XP rather than Win7?

Anyone have any good suggestions for getting past that Admin Password to
reinstall XP? I tried the password that was on XP and that wasn't
it....

Here's the Microsoft official method:

How to log on to your Windows XP-based computer if you forget your
password or if your password expires
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321305

Here's a bunch of others, most seem to be password crackers:

win xp admin password reset - Google Search
http://www.google.ca/search?q=win+xp...ient=firefox-a

So, Yousuf (Cat Stevens - is this you?), it will all work. However I
have
another problem on my hand.

No, actually I may be dating myself here, but I've been Yousuf longer than
he's been Yousuf. He's been around on Earth bit longer overall, but not as
Yousuf.

And yeah it is odd that Windows 32 bit is sitting there right next to
Windows 64 bit. And everything is "pretty" accessible.

I'd like to make the migration even simpler by using this utility:

Upgrade XP to Windows 7, hassle-free — Zinstall
http://www.zinstall.com/

I've been carrying out an email conversation with them, and I asked them
whether I should be making a dual-boot out of this thing, and they said
specifically, "no, install it over top of the existing XP". So this may
explain how they do it. It doesn't matter, I've managed to make a clone of
my boot disk onto an external eSATA disk now, and I can conceivably go
either way now, installing it overtop or dual-booting, both options are
now available to me.

Yousuf Khan

Hi there and read through most of your post and chuckled a bit. All the old
stuff was saved, not so much backed up. If you know "explorer" then you know
how to find it. Of course with an 80GB hard disk about half of it is now
packed with the data from the old XP install.

There was no way, no way, the machine was letting me back into Windows. So,
I just stuck the Win7 Disk in the DVD drive and the machine booted from it.
Nice. Of course the disk was a Vista Upgrade disk so I didn't think it would
work. But it did.

Yeah, I think I might look closer into the password hack things, but, my
guess the machine is no longer running XP, it thinks and runs only Win7 now.
So the way those things work it might be folly. I still have a couple of
weeks to fart around. Maybe more...

Cheerio.

Ted

On Feb 15, 9:10*pm, Yousuf Khan wrote:
smlunatick wrote:
I have completed a dual-boot and I am working on the migrations. *The
best way to do this is to set up a new internal hard drive. *This will
then allow to to "fix" the Windows 7 as the newer boot drive, with the
Windows 7 install DVD "repair" features.

In what way are you "repairing" Windows 7? Are you saying that Windows 7
has migration tools to move applications over from XP, i.e. "repairing"
in that way?

One important software to consider is EasyBCD. *This software will
allow to to "adjust" the newer Windows 7 (or Vista) BCD records.

Is this a boot selector? I already have grub with my Linux install.

* * * * Yousuf Khan

I was told since my Windows 7 is on the second hard drive and when I
disconnect my XP drive, I would need to boot. The Window 7 DVD has
included several tools to fix the "boot" of Windows 7.

EasyBCD is an enhanced "editor" to control the "boot" sequence of
which Windows starts automatically.

Be carefully with the "grub" since the Windows 7 install "would"
probably replace it with BCD.

On Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:07:09 -0500, Yousuf Khan
wrote:

Well, I want to really migrate, but I want to have XP around temporarily
as it was, so I can properly migrate things over.

If you have the space, or are willing to add an external drive to give
you the space, then you could take a suitable snapshot of your
existing drive, and then use something like VMware to run your old XP
as a virtual system.

--
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/swifty.html
http://www.ringers.org.uk

smlunatick wrote:
On Feb 15, 9:10 pm, Yousuf Khan wrote:
smlunatick wrote:
One important software to consider is EasyBCD. This software will
allow to to "adjust" the newer Windows 7 (or Vista) BCD records.
Is this a boot selector? I already have grub with my Linux install.

I was told since my Windows 7 is on the second hard drive and when I
disconnect my XP drive, I would need to boot. The Window 7 DVD has
included several tools to fix the "boot" of Windows 7.

EasyBCD is an enhanced "editor" to control the "boot" sequence of
which Windows starts automatically.

Okay, now I see you're point here, being used to XP, I thought that they
would simply be continuing with BOOT.INI, but no, that was too simple.
They had to replace it with bcdedit.exe, I guess. Well, now that I've
played with bcdedit, I think I'll give EasyBCD a try. :-)

Be carefully with the "grub" since the Windows 7 install "would"
probably replace it with BCD.

Yeah, I had a tool called SuperGrubDisk Autoloader that was able to
recover Grub entries for you. But it looks like even Ubuntu suffers from
this constant Microsoftian tendency to change things that were working
just fine before, and the new Grub system is not recoverable through
SuperGrubDisk. Grrr. %(

Yousuf Khan

Hello Yousuf khan,
You can visit the official Microsoft Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 site he http://tinyurl.com/yz2uogt

There are some nice videos tutorials and steps to take when migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7. And yes it is true you cannot directly upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 you can take some steps to ensure a smooth process.
Thanks again and good luck!

John M.
Microsoft Windows Client Support