Suggestions before I upgrade my wife's laptop to Win 7

[freebird73717]

Hello all!

My wife's school has given her a copy of win 7. She want's me to upgrade her HP dv9700 laptop from vista home premium to win 7. Is there anything I should do before the upgrade besides running a full backup. I am right now running a full disc backup using paragon drive backup. That way if anything major bad happens I can just restore the backup and everything will be okay.

Is there anything else I should do to prepare?


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solved
I went ahead and set up a dual boot system with vista and win7 which left vista untouched. Then I used the migration tool as suggested by Gunslinger to get the settings transferred. Many thanks to all who helped.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Go to the www.HP.com and see if there are any drivers for 7.

[freebird73717]

Excellent suggestion MovieGeek. Doing so right now. I'm also just doing some random google searches for "upgrading dv9700 from vista to win7".

According to HP there is no official support for windows 7 drivers for this laptop.

[MOVIEGEEK]

According to HP there is no official support for windows 7 drivers for this laptop.

That might be a problem, especially if you have 7 64bit. I would ask this question in the HP forum.
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/

[freebird73717]

It's 7 enterprise 32 bit. Not sure why they don't offer 64bit. It was a free download from the schools website. They offer all students free MS Software. Not sure why they don't give 64 but as the old saying goes "Beggars can't be choosers". For free I can't complain.

If I can't get it on her laptop I'll just save it for my next desktop build. I'm still gonna keep researching though.

Thanks for the help.

[Jim44]

Something to keep in mind, in some cases the Vista drivers (if available) will work for old hardware technically not supported under Win7.

You can also run Microsoft's Compatibility program on the laptop, and it should give you an idea of what may and may not work.

I've upgrade 3 PCs now, including an old, bought-as-used Lenovo T42 laptop. IIRC, the video chipset "wasn't supported" in Win7, but must have grabbed the Vista ones, 'cause it works fine (no Aero, no big deal ). And, FWIW, I've found the MS driver support the best so far of any OS upgrade. I've done my own upgrades going back to Win95 and the newest PC is 2+ years old.

Hope that helps and good luck.

[bendixG15]

Main driver problem that I have had in going to Win7 (32 bit) ....

Video cards don't have W7 have drivers
USB wireless adapters don't have W7 drivers

[Almost Human]

I upgraded my HP Pavillion dv9000 (dv9910us) from Vista Home Premium 32 bit to Win 7 Home Premium 32 bit with a clean upgrade. The only program I had to download separately was HP Wireless Assistant, everything else installed and worked beautifly.

[guns1inger]

Part of the install is a compatibility check of existing software and hardware. It will tell you what will definitely cause problems, and what may cause problems. The first category may mean uninstalling items before upgrading. If possible, have the laptop connected to the internet during the upgrade so W7 can download extra items like drivers during the install. You can also use the migration wizard, which is in the Extras (or Support, not sure which) folder on the W7 disc. It will grab all the files and settings for the user accounts and put them in a single file which can then be used to restore the accounts after the upgrade if necessary. I suggest this because I don't believe you can do an in place upgrade from Vista Home Premium to W7 Professional. I believe the in place upgrade only works within families - i.e. Vista Home -> W7 Home or Home Premium, Vista Business to W7 Professional or Enterprise etc.

I have used the migration wizard to backup accounts from XP machines, replaced XP with W7 (no upgrade path available), then restored the accounts from the backups. Programs still have to be reinstalled, but all the settings are back in place - e.g. Firefox started up with all the bookmarks and plugins for that user.

[freebird73717]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I'm going to go ahead with the install tomorrow. I've gotten the full backup done now so even if things don't go well or if she doesn't like 7 and want's to go back to vista I won't have any problems. I appreciate all the comments.

[edDV]

It's 7 enterprise 32 bit. Not sure why they don't offer 64bit. It was a free download from the schools website. They offer all students free MS Software. Not sure why they don't give 64 but as the old saying goes "Beggars can't be choosers". For free I can't complain.

If I can't get it on her laptop I'll just save it for my next desktop build. I'm still gonna keep researching though.

Thanks for the help.

Many corporations and institutions require 32 bit to run internal applications. Enterprise version Win 7 will include XP emulation. 64 bit gives no advantage on a laptop unless it needs to run >4GB memory.

[guns1inger]

We use the 32bit version on the laptops/tablets here because most are 2GB machines. I have seen one Mac with 2 GB running W7 Ultimate 64 bit in VMWare with only 1 GB ram allocated . . . . . . . . . . . This was suggested to the owner and configured by their local Apple shop.

[Poppa_Meth]

I've only done one upgrade from Vista 64 to Win7 64. It went smoothly but after the upgrade I had no end to the BSODs. Turns out even though the upgrade adviser said everything was good to go, I had to find the latest Win7 drivers for it to stop the BSOD. I still get one from time to time related to Win32k.sys, but have been unable to track down exactly what it causing it.

Definitely hang on to that backup just in case.

[edDV]

I don't understand why anyone would upgrade an existing laptop to 64bit. Asking for trouble with no benefit.

[zoobie]

your wife really needs W7, eh?
maybe she's been kidnapped and replaced with a clone
admittedly, this is fun for some geeks...
of course, I would suggest to forget it and find something creative to do

[freebird73717]

Does she really need it? Nope. Does she want it? Yep.

Honestly I'd rather keep this for a future build.

Looks like I'm going to be doing a dual boot for her now anyways. Gunslinger was right. I can't upgrade from vista home premium to 7 enterprise. So I'm going to set her up a dual boot system so she can have her vista (data and programs untouched) and still be able to play with 7.

[freebird73717]

Well I have the dual boot set up for her now. She is trying it out now as I type this. So far she likes it. The first thing she said was "Man this sure seems faster!" Looks like I'm going to be installing more of her favorite programs into it.

So thanks to all who have offered suggestions. Your help was much appreciated.

One thing I'm going to leave you all with is something that I found while preparing for this install. It's an automated installer for multiple applications. It will download and silent install the applications you choose while skipping installations on all toolbars and other advertisement tricks that can be found in some installers. I used it to install firefox, avast, malwarebytes, java, and flash to her new win 7 partition. Very simple.
Check it out.

www.ninite.com