[turkey]

I know that the best way is to do a clean install and then re-install your applications. However, I've seen a product that claims to let you upgrade without having to reinstall all your applications.

I was just wondering whether anyone had tried it? It's called Laplink PC Mover.

http://www.laplink.com/pcmover/pcmoverupgradeassistant.html

[MerlinWerks]

Never tried it, but you may want to check out some of the comments on Amazon for it...

http://www.amazon.com/Laplink-mover-Windows-Upgrade-Assistant/dp/B002TA4ZKA

[Thump553]

I switched to a new Win7 box back in January.  My XP box was still up and operating at the time, but of course MS doesn't natively support migration from XP to Win7.  I looked into a few of the the mover type programs at the time, but every one I looked at had scary user reviews-usually along the line of "it took forever and frequently would fail at the end" variety.

I ended up reinstalling my programs and mitgrating the data over the network.

[tonyptony]

I ended up reinstalling my programs and mitgrating the data over the network.

IMO the best way to do it. Buy another drive for Win7 and set the old one up as a secondary to migrate data and other stuff. It will also help you keep track of what you had installed and how it was set up. You can set up your BIOS to boot to the old XP drive whenever you need to launch an old program to check anything out.

[Doublej]

I used Microsoft's free migration tool. It will take all of your files and settings and migrate them to the new OS. It will also present a list of programs that were on the old machine. You can then reinstall them manually.

When I launched Firefox for the first time after upgrading I was surprised that bookmarks, configuration and addons were as before.

[Dan Driscoll]

I know that the best way is to do a clean install and then re-install your applications. However, I've seen a product that claims to let you upgrade without having to reinstall all your applications.

All I can say is "Don't do it!". There's a reason why doing a clean install is best, it works, it works reliably and you don't have to pay for a transfer program, none of which seem to work worth a damn.

I posted about my upgrade from 32 bit XP to 64 bit Win 7 right after the upgrade was released, using the Windows Easy Transfer Program and an external HDD. For the first time ever I was not only happy with a Windows upgrade, I was also impressed with how relatively easy it was and how well M$ documented the instructions and process. Yes, doing a clean install does take some time, but most of that is re-installing your old programs. And at the end you have a truly clean machine, no viruses, trojans or other malware. That's assuming you install good security software and scan your backed-up data files before re-installing them.