How to upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7

On Monday we saw how to migrate your old XP to Windows 8.1, taking advantage of XP's end of support. However, we will not always be able to make that migration. Perhaps our hardware does not support it or we use programs that do not work in Windows 8.1. Or maybe we just prefer Windows 7, which can also be.

Whatever the reason, if you want to migrate XP to Windows 7 today in Xataka Windows we are going to see how to do it, with the requirements minimum that your computer will need, the possibilities of updating that exist and how to carry it out.

Minimum requirements: about the same as Windows 8.1

Microsoft did a good job with Windows 8 and the minimum requirements were barely changed from 7. Let's see what they are, including XP for reference:

Characteristic	Windows Xp	Windows 7	Windows 8.1
Processor	Pentium 233 MHz	1GHz	1 GHzPAE, NX and SSE2 support
RAM)	64MB	1 GB for 32-bit systems2 GB for 64-bit systems	1 GB for 32-bit systems2 GB for 64-bit systems
HDD	1.5 GB	16 GB for 32-bit systems 20 GB for 64-bit systems	16 GB for 32-bit systems 20 GB for 64-bit systems
Graphic card	Minimum resolution 800x600	DirectX 9 with WDDM	DirectX 9 with WDDM

There is virtually no case where you can upgrade to 7 and not Windows 8. The only requirements that change are three processor features : PAE (support of more than 4GB of RAM on 32-bit systems), NX (protection against buffer overflow attacks or similar) and SSE2 (better performance in numerical calculations). Roughly speaking, this means that if your processor is older than Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64 you won't be able to upgrade to Windows 8.1.

In this situation, our recommendation is that if your hardware lets you down, upgrade to Windows 8.1. In general it works better, and as soon as you get used to the interface change everything is easier. In any other case, stick with us and we'll see how to upgrade to Windows 7.

How to get Windows 7

Before we get started with the installation we need our Windows 7 disc and license Microsoft no longer directly sells these licenses, so we need to resort to third parties that sell it. Although there are probably still physical stores selling it, Amazon is a safe bet.

You can find the Professional version for around 100 euros, slightly less if you choose a more limited version like Home Premium. In any case, it shouldn't be difficult to obtain a Windows 7 license legally.

Windows 7 Update

As always, with any installation we will have to make a backup, a cbackup copy of our data Normally we do it in case something goes wrong wrong and we lose what we have on the disk. In this case it is because Microsoft does not support direct upgrade from XP and we will have to start from scratch.

To carry out the backup we can do it manually by copying the files that interest us, using specific backup utilities or using the wizard Windows Easy Transferfrom Microsoft. This wizard is very easy to use and will allow us to easily copy both our files and our settings and user accounts. Everything will be saved in a .mig file that we will have to save to restore it later.

Once we have our backup copy done, we move on to action.We insert the Windows 7 disc into the computer and turn it on to begin the installation. After choosing the language settings, the wizard will ask us if we want to download and install updates while the system is being installed, to which we should answer yes.

After accepting the license terms, it will give us two options: update or custom installation. We will have to choose the custom since the update is not available. In the following dialog we can choose the partition in which to install the system. If we choose not to format anything, the existing files will be saved in a Windows.old folder. Otherwise, everything on the partition will be erased.

While installing from scratch is always good, if you don't format you will probably avoid having to copy your backup files back to your system, and will save yourself a lot of time doing so.Personally I would format the drive unless I was certain that the XP we are upgrading to does not have a problem.

From now on, everything is rolling. We let Windows continue the installation, we have a coffee, we read a book and when we come back everything will be ready. All that remains is to restore the backup copies (if you have done it with Easy Transfer, which comes pre-installed in Windows 7, it is as simple as opening the program and following the instructions) and you already have your system updated without any problem. At least until 2020, when Windows 7 ends support