Right well looks like they got windows 7 right from what i can tell. i am thinking of upgrading my xp to windows 7. how do i go about this? back up my music and pictures then format my c drive and format my e drive? i have 2 hard drives one with windows xp media center edition and the other as more space 750gb i think, which i use for movies and games. help and advice would be nice
Im not currently on windows 7 but i think u have got the right idea. Backup everything from game saves, music, video, pictures etc. The windows xp easy transfer wizzard is very useful especialy if u have an external hard drive. Once you have finished backing up u could format your drives but im not sure if u have 2, as long as your stuffs backed up pop in the disk restart the system and away u go. Oh yeah tell me whether windows 7 is good once u have installed. Im thinking about upgrading.
ive never trusted wizards lol so will maually drag and drop all that bizzle ok pal I think that sounds good. windows should know a new operating system has been put in. but im more of a retro kinda guy, id prefer to format them
So you have two drives - one which you boot a current copy of windows from, another for data? Back up everything you want to keep from your boot drive, pop in the install disk and away you go. Just pay attention not to format your data drive.
slight threadjack, anyone able to give me an idea of how much HD space win7 takes to operate happily (and for that matter XP if pagefiles are on another drive/partition) ? i like keeping OS on a separate partition so i can image it and back up easy with all my data and games on the remaining space, have 1 30GB partition for main OS currently and vista takes up 20GB of that but thats definitely getting reformatted. i'm hoping to dualboot XP and win7 just to have XP as a backup so thats 2 partitions (pretty sure XP is fine on 10gb, probably make it 15gb to be safe)
Somewhere between 12 and 18GB I would reckon, without any extra programs. Mine currently takes up about 18GB, but that's with a 4GB pagefile I have yet to bin.
yes that is correct bud new plan, is to dual boot. lets see what happens. should be an experience. not done it before and i didnt fancy running it as a virtual pc.
Dual boot easy... Use Gparted to resize the current windows partition if needed, then do a 'custom' install from the Windows7 disc
nice thanks bud, will do this when i get home printed off some info from the web on how to do it. amazing stuff ! yeah i will need to make the current windows partition bigger. so im guessing i cant install windows 7 on the other hard drive the one i use for media. do i have to use the same drive that xp is currently installed on (expand the partition then create a new drive letter within it? to then load w7 to that?) sorry if thats a dumb question just to note i have 2 physical hdd's 1 is about 250gb i think i partitioned about 30gb of that for windows xp then the rest is for what ever then i have a 500gb which is used just for media, games pictures etc this is not partitioned. its just one big drive
slight problem, it wont let me make my windows partition any bigger. i have my c drive split in two. so there is 30gb for windows (c) drive and the rest 200gb (d) drive so i cant make it a primary partition so i have had to re split the d partition and allocate it as a logical drive. giving it 40gb. here is where i will install w7 is this ok or will it not work?
move every thing to the 500gb drive and reformat the 250gb (disconnect the 500gb before starting the install on the 250gb so the start up files do not end up on the 500gb one as it can happen)
You would need to shrink D: to free up space to make C: bigger. Yep it'll work, doesn't matter which physical drive windows is installed on so long as the install disc can see the drive.
ahh i see! well i have installed it ok, problem is now i have my drive split in 3 and it cant seem to find my 500gb secondary drive :S so i have windows xp showing as drive letter (D) windows 7 as the (C) partition and then another partition which is the remaining space (E) If i go to disk managment i can see the 500gb and its Disk 1, it hasnt got a drive letter and i cant see it under my computer :S also when i start up the pc i cannot select from xp or 7 oh dear
i am guessing :S is S: is your 500gb drive try changing it to an new letter give us some screen shots, if you want i can do remote assist with MSN or teamviewer i prefer teamviewer its very easy to use and does not suffer slow downs when animated stuff happens you do not even need to install it you can just run it give you an temp password and id that changes every time you open it
A screenshot of Disk Management would be useful. Right click the partition that isn't showing and I think there is an initialise option which should then let you assign it a drive letter... Can't remember exactly the option (it's been a while since it changed partitions!)
oh my word i dont know how i have done this but, my E drive that was 500gb is now the C drive... and the orignal c drive that has windows xp on it is now the D drive and the other half of its partition is the E drive !! how on earth have i managed that! Just deleted windows 7 off of it and now reinstalling xp back to the 30gb partition. ugh im a nugget clearly !
told you to disconnect the 500gb drive if you wish to still use XP, get all the data off the 250gb drive and split that into 2 (say 50gb for XP as your not likely going to be using it a lot and 200gb for win7 make sure you install Win7 on the second partition) install XP first then Win7 as you can dual boot then (make sure the 500gb is disconnected)
yeah haha you were right !!! I suck at this sort of thing (can you tell lol) well im re installing it all 30gb for xp the rest for what ever. and the 500gb for music vids games. well i dont mind it being the 500gb just seems a bit odd since on the motherboard its in socket 2. yah i would have unplugged the 500gb but i have a sugo case and its so fiddly i realllllly cant be bothered to open it lol might just install windows 7 and forget about xp all together ! will re format the drive and not split it, since i have the 500gb drive. but now the 500 is the c drive! :S so what the hell can i do lol how when i come round to it do i make the 250 drive the c drive again and the 500 d drive
You will have three partitions on two disks. 250GB HDD C: Windows 7 D: Win XP 500GB HDD E: Storage/Media/etc. You can change the drive letters for D & E in disk management if you want to after the install
