If you’re in any doubt about your computer’s ability to run Win7, first run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor (tinyurl.com/no4xb7). “In general, if your PC can run Windows Vista, it can run Windows 7,” says Microsoft.

Settings transfer. Technically, we could have done an Upgrade installation with these OSes (operating systems), but we wanted to demonstrate the process for users without that option. If you use Windows XP, for instance, you won’t be able to do a simple Upgrade installation.

Therefore, we chose the Custom option to perform a clean install, meaning that it formatted our hard drive’s Windows partition and installed a pristine copy of Win7. While the Custom procedure may give you a more stable result than the Upgrade option, you’ll need to reinstall all your apps and data afterward. Note that a Custom Win7 installation does provide your personal data with a safety net: It moves your files into a new folder labeled C:\Windows.old, and you’ll be able to find it in the new OS.

However, Windows Easy Transfer can move your personal files to the new OS for you, along with email contacts and messages (from Microsoft products), and various settings. Windows Easy Transfer won’t convey any installed applications, device drivers, or nonstandard fonts, however. Also, both OSes must use the same type of memory addressing, namely 32-bit or 64-bit.

In Vista, click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and Windows Easy Transfer. If you are using another OS such as WinXP, browse the Win7 installation disc for D:\Support\ Migwiz\Migsetup.exe (where “D” is the letter of your DVD or Blu-ray Disc drive) and then double-click it.

When Windows Easy Transfer launches, click Next, click Start A New Transfer, and select My Old Computer. Because we would be moving our files and settings back to the same computer after the clean OS installation, we chose Use A CD, DVD, Or Other Removable Media.

We had an eSATA (external Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) flash memory drive connected and ready to use, so we selected External Hard Disk Or To A Network Location. (The option marked USB Flash Drive was grayed out.) We clicked Browse, Computer, and New Volume (E:), the letter of our eSATA drive. We clicked Save and Next.

Now, it was time to choose the items we wanted to carry over to Win7. We picked All User Accounts, Files, And Settings. On the next screen, click the Customize button if you would like to exclude particular folders or drives, include files stored in unusual locations, and so on. For example, you might choose to exclude your music collection if it’s backed up elsewhere (such as on your iPod), and your external drive or disc is short on storage space.

Finally, click Next. Windows Easy Transfer will move your data to the drive or medium you specified. When this operation ends, click Close. On your drive or disc, there should be a new file called SaveData.mig or perhaps IMG00001.mig; that’s your backed-up data. Safely remove the drive or disc and set it aside for now.

Preparation. Update your antivirus software and then run a full scan of your computer. Next, disable the antivirus. For instance, with Avast!, we right-clicked its “a” icon in the System Tray and then selected On-Access Protection Control. We clicked Terminate, Yes, and OK.

Microsoft recommends following up by downloading and running the latest Malicious Software Removal Tool (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=125343). The version on this page is for 32-bit systems; if you have a 64-bit OS, click the link in the Overview section partway down the page. Finally, back up your personal files.

Install. Insert the Win7 installation disc, and then run the Setup.exe. (If you’re not using the Administrator user account on your current Windows installation, right-click Setup.exe and select Run As Administrator or Run As, The Following User, and your Administrator account.)

At the Install Windows screen, click Install Now and Go Online To Get The Latest Updates For Installation (Recommended). Next, check the I Accept The License Terms box and click Next.

As we mentioned above, we did a clean installation, because most users will have to. We clicked Custom (Advanced), and then we selected the C: hard drive partition (storage section with its own drive letter) for the installation.

Click Next and OK, and the installation will begin. After a few restarts, you’ll see the familiar Windows queries about what country you’re in, the keyboard layout you prefer, and so on. We kept the defaults and clicked Next. We typed a username and computer name when prompted and then clicked Next again. Win7 gave us the opportunity to set a password, and then it asked us to type in the 25-character Product Key associated with our installation disc. We did so and clicked Next.

Mindful of security, we clicked the default option marked Use Recommended Settings. Next, we set our time zone and adjusted our clock. We clicked Work Network at the next prompt, but you should examine the Home and Public Network descriptions to see whether one of those is the best selection for your situation.

A few seconds later, Win7’s Desktop appeared, and we were ready to get our PC back to normal.

File restoration. It was time to retrieve our transferred settings from our eSATA drive. Unfortunately, Win7 and/or our motherboard’s SATA controller didn’t automatically detect it, so we pressed the Windows logo key and the PAUSE key simultaneously to launch System properties. We clicked Device Manager and then clicked the computer name, Action, and Scan For Hardware Changes, which caused Win7 to mount (detect and recognize) our drive.

In the Autoplay window, we opted to view our eSATA drive’s contents. We double-clicked the SaveData.mig file stored there, which started Win7’s Windows Easy Transfer.

Windows Easy Transfer showed us two entries with checked boxes next to them. One was named after the user account from our old Vista installation, and the other was labeled Shared Items. As both items were selected, and we couldn’t think of any reason not to restore all the items we had recently backed up for the migration, we left them in their default states and clicked Transfer.

A minute or so later, Windows Easy Transfer was finished. Our Desktop background (wallpaper) changed to the one we’d used in Vista. We clicked See What Was Transferred and the various Details links to view a list of the user accounts, files, and settings that made the jump. Afterward, we clicked Close and Restart Now.

Lastly, we connected to the Internet and downloaded the latest drivers for our motherboard from its manufacturer’s site. We also visited Nvidia.com for the latest drivers for our graphics card. In each case, if there wasn’t a specific 32-bit Win7 driver for a device, we continued to use the driver that the OS automatically chose during its installation. We should mention that Win7 did a great job of finding drivers for our test system—not a single component showed a caution icon in Device Manager.

Third-Party Migration Help

Another option, which is a real time saver if you use an old or 64-bit version of Windows, is Laplink’s PCmover Home ($39.95; www.laplink.com). Windows Easy Transfer could not move our files and settings from 64-bit Vista to a 32-bit copy of Win7, for instance, but the latest version of PCmover easily handled this unusual job. Moreover, Laplink is offering an inexpensive (less than $20) PCmover Upgrade Assistant that allows users of WinXP/2000/32-bit Vista and others to move to Win7 as an in-place upgrade instead of a clean installation, meaning that you won’t need to use a cable or storage device to transfer your data.

We used a late beta of PCmover Professional ($59.95 and up) version 5.00. It supports Win7 and all 32- and 64-bit migrations from Win95 and later to the newest OS. More to the point, it can do in-place upgrades to Win7 from any of these earlier versions of Windows.

During the installation process, PCmover warned us that it can’t transfer security applications such as antivirus and that music files and apps with DRM (digital rights management) may need to be reactivated afterward. The software can’t install hardware drivers, either; these probably require new versions that are compatible with Win7, anyway.

First, disable your antivirus as directed above. Next, install PCmover under your existing OS, which was 64-bit Vista in our case. After you agree to Laplink’s many notifications, you'll wind up at a window called Preparing Your Computer For Migration. Click Old Computer and then click Next.

In the Choose Migration Type panel, select Full Migration and Next. Type your name, email address, and PCmover serial number in the provided fields and then click Next. The Method Of Migration gave us the usual network, cable, and storage media options for the data move, but what caught our eye was the Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant. We clicked it and chose Next. Again, the entry marked Full Migration sounded best to us, so we chose Next again.

We didn’t need to change any settings on PCmover’s next few pages, which gave us the opportunity to exclude/include particular applications, user accounts, file folders, hard drive partitions, and file types in its “moving van.” We clicked Next through all of these, but if you store personal files in folders other than Documents, Music, and so on, you may want to tell the software to include these areas. We selected Next again to let PCmover create a moving journal, which basically meant that it ascertained which data to move.

Nearing the end, in the Identify Moving Van File Name window, we made note of the file path wherein PCmover would store our data: C:\PCmover\Upgrade.pcv. You can change this if necessary. Click Next three times and then click Yes. Finally, click Finish when PCmover is done.

We checked the file path above and found that our Upgrade.pcv file was a mere 10.6MB on our sparsely used test PC. The reason for this unexpectedly small file size, as we found out later, is the fact that PCmover efficiently uses the Windows.old backup folder that Win7 creates during an installation. Pretty slick.

Now, we installed Win7 as described above. Note that you’ll need to choose to do a Custom (Advanced) installation; PCmover will make it seem like an in-place upgrade later on. Put Win7 on the same partition (such as C:) as your earlier OS, despite the warning message about losing data.

Afterward, we installed PCmover under Win7 and launched it. When we reached the window titled Preparing Your Computers For Migration, we clicked New Computer, Next, Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant, and Next twice. PCmover asked whether it should look for our “moving van” file in the default location, C:\PCmover\Upgrade.pcv, and we agreed by clicking Next twice.

Success! Here’s a look at Windows 7’s default Desktop.

PCmover then found our old data in C:\Windows.old and asked us whether we wanted to Copy files from it (leaving redundant data behind for safety) or Move them (delete the files after the move to conserve hard drive space). We clicked OK to go with the default option, Copy.

The Map Users panel offered us a chance to change the way our user accounts would migrate to Win7. If you want to do this, click the user account you want to alter and click the Change Target button. We didn’t see a need to do so, so we clicked Done. Similarly, the Map Drives window lets you change the destination partition of old data, such as by sending your old F: drive’s files to the C: drive on your new Win7 system. The Change Destination lets you do this, as well as exclude certain drive letters from the transfer.

Click Done, and PCmover will shuttle your data to its new location. When you click Finish, your PC will restart. Afterward, we clicked Run StartUp This to launch PCmover’s manager of our old programs that are set to run every time Windows starts. We weren’t sure which programs would be compatible with Win7, so we experimented by enabling one at a time and then rebooting. If any transferred app causes problems on your PC, you can use StartUp This to keep it from starting with Win7. You may need to uninstall and reinstall the troublesome program (or an updated version) or right-click its icon and select Properties and the Compatibility tab to run the app as your old OS did.

After we made certain that all of our data and settings were intact, we deleted the C:\Windows.old folder to free up hard drive space.

Lucky Seven

Already, we’re finding that Win7 improves upon WinXP and Vista in myriad ways, even though it’s a mere retooling of the latter. Microsoft sincerely hopes you think so, too.

by Marty Sems