A guide to hassle free migration from Windows XP to Windows 7

Microsoft released Windows 7 in 2009 and over the two years a number of users have migrated from Windows XP to Windows 7. This year Microsoft released Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 Service Pack 1. This gives more concrete reason to migrate to newer platform from Windows XP. In this article we will discuss the benefits customers should look for while migrating to Windows 7. We will also take up the challenges faced by the IT industry and how migration to the newer platform helps solve most of the productivity and security challenges. We will further take stock of the different ways that will help organizations in deploying Windows 7 flawlessly in their enterprise environment. There are different ways to migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7. You can use the following tools to successfully migrate from Windows XP to 7 Migration:

• Windows Upgrade Advisor
• Windows Easy Transfer
• USMT 4.0 & USMT 4.0 using Hard-Link Migration

These are some of the ways in which you can take the backup of the your data in Windows XP and after migrating to Windows 7, you can restore that data using any of the tools mentioned above. However, even before you plan for a migration, make sure that you have a data backup in case of an unsuccessful migration.
First and foremost thing is to validate if your machine is capable of handling Windows 7. You can visit Microsoft's website to identify the system requirements for Windows 7. The most preferred way to see the actual requirements and validate if the computer is capable of running Windows 7 is running Windows Upgrade Advisor.

Windows Upgrade Advisor
 

First download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. Once the tool is downloaded, run the tool and see the report that will give detailed hardware information and accordingly you can plan for Windows 7 Migration.

Windows Easy Transfer

Windows Easy Transfer is free tool that is designed to take the user data and settings as a backup and store it on external USB device. This is recommended if you are migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7 on same machine. If there is network connectivity between the old computer and the new computer then you can directly transfer the data over the network. Lastly, if you have Windows Easy Transfer cable then you can use it to transfer data from the old computer to the new computer.

Once you are done with the data backup using Windows Easy Transfer, you can install Windows 7 on the computer. After the successful installation of Windows 7, you can run the Windows Easy Transfer on Windows 7 and restore the user data and settings back to the same computer.

Things to note, Windows Easy Transfer:

• does not take the backup of Program Files
• does not transfer the data from 64-bit Windows to 32-bit Windows