Can you upgrade an old XP PC to Windows 7? Should you?

ZDNet  - Ed Bott
Sep 29, 2009
Link to article

How old is too old? I had a chance to think about this question twice over the weekend. Once while pondering my fifty-somethingth birthday (as of today, I am the same age as Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons combined), and the other while deciding whether to upgrade my friend Lisa’s four-year-old Sony notebook to Windows 7.

The birthday will happen whether I want it or not. But as for that Sony? That took a little more thought. It would have been a no-brainer had this been a two-year-old PC that Lisa had downgraded to XP to avoid the tribulations of Vista. But this machine, once a triumph of Sonyhardware engineering, could easily be deemed ready to retire.

After careful consideration, I finally decided to go ahead with the upgrade, taking careful notes and snapping lots of screen shots along the way. The XP-to-7 odyssey was an interesting one, with surprising results and several lessons I can share with anyone contemplating a similar adventure. Along the way I also tried out a new edition of Laplink’s PCmover software, which is specifically designed to ease this sort of migration. I found some surprises there as well.

I’ve divided this report into three parts:

Part 1: Can this PC be upgraded? Should it?

This ultraportable Sony VAIO was originally manufactured in August 2005, more than four years ago. Although it had plenty of resources for its time, it can be upgraded in only the most limited ways. Are its ancient CPU and limited RAM up to the challenge of a 2009-vintage OS? I was skeptical. The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor said it would work. But see for yourself.

Part 2: Assessing the upgrade options

There’s more than one way to complete this transition. With the help of image backup software, I was able to compare and contrast separate upgrade paths: a clean install, with and without Windows Easy Transfer, and a migration using the PCmover software. I also considered and rejected a third option. In this section, the pros, cons, and tips for each one.

Editor's Note: For the sake of space, we have only included the introduction and part 3 of this article.  The full article (including parts 1 & 2) is available at ZDNet.  A link is available above.

Part 3: PCmover tries to do what Microsoft won’t

You can’t directly upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7. Microsoft’s Windows Easy Transfer utility moves settings and files, but not programs. The result is a process that can fairly be characterized as tedious. Laplink Software’s PCmover steps into the gap, promising to move programs and data and settings.

And now for the third option, Laplink’s PCmover software.

PCmover tries to do what Microsoft won’t Laplink Software is one of the true greybeards of the PC industry. I can remember using the Laplink program (the company’s name at that time was Traveling Software) on MS-DOS-based PCs back in the 1980s.

The PCmover program has been around for a few years, but it needed a major rewrite for Windows 7. I tested a pre-release version of the software that had some rough edges, many of which should be smoothed out by the time it’s ready for release.

PCmover is designed to do everything that Windows Easy Transfer does, with one crucial addition: it migrates programs as well. (Note: It doesn’t do a thing with device drivers.)  Although it works on systems running Vista, it’s especially welcome on XP machines, which don’t offer a direct upgrade path. Using a network, a transfer cable, or an external storage device, you can migrate your files, programs, and settings from an old PC to a new one. For this revision, the program adds a Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant mode.

In broad strokes, the process works like this:

After installing PCmover, you run the Upgrade Assistant on the PC running Windows XP. It scans your system and makes an inventory of every installed program it can recognize, along with settings and data files. This inventory is stored as a small file. You can customize which programs and settings are available for migration.

Next, you perform a custom install of Windows 7 on the PC. That keeps all your old program files and data in the Windows.old folder.

After you restart the new Windows 7 installation, you install and run PCmover again, once again choosing the Upgrade Assistant option. Using the upgrade file, it pulls the data and program files from Windows.old and adds the associated registry settings for each migrated program.

When you’re all done, you do a little bit of housekeeping to decide which applications start automatically, and you check to make sure everything migrated properly.

Sounds great in theory. So how did it do in practice? Not perfect, but not bad. Office 2003, Firefox, and Thunderbird migrated perfectly. The ancient photo-editing program Picture Publisher 10 worked, surprisingly, although it threw up a UAC prompt with every start.

A few truly odd errors appeared when I tried to run Windows Live programs, complaining that “ The ordinal 62 could not be located” in a particular DLL.  A Laplink spokesperson assures me that that bug has been swatted and that it will not appear in the final shipping product. I fixed them by going to the Windows Live website and reinstalling the Live Essentials programs.

I wasn’t so lucky trying to run InDesign 3, where a problem associated with Adobe’s activation code caused the program to fail catastrophically. According to Laplink, Lisa will need to reinstall this program.

I also got bizarre errors when I tried to run the OEM Roxio media software that was originally installed with this system. Overall, I would say 80% or more of the migrated software worked, and the PCmover utility probably cut an hour or two off the total upgrade time. Don’t expect perfection from this software. You’ll probably have to reinstall some software and do some modest tweaking. You’ll still have to deal with driver issues for any devices that aren’t detected by Windows 7. You might also have to deal with some activation and licensing hassles.

But you will save time.

From a usability standpoint, the PCmover software has one glaring flaw. On an initial setup screen, it commands you to run the software on your new PC first. If you’re doing an in-place upgrade, that’s just wrong, a fact that a Laplink spokesperson readily agreed was a flaw. They suggest instead that you follow the detailed instructions on their website, which are accessible via a link in the program itself.

One aspect of the PCmover setup program that irritated me tremendously and deserves to be called out is its offer to install the Ask browser toolbar and change your home page and default search provider. In the PCmover install, the latter two options are selected by default (as shown below), and the option to install the toolbar is presented as a license agreement, which many people will consent to automatically. In a program whose purpose is to preserve your settings and software, that’s an unwelcome option.

For this edition, Laplink has dramatically dropped its pricing. The company says it’ll be shipping a Windows 7-only version of the PCmover software on October 1, at a suggested retail price of $29.95 (that’s $20 less than the current Home edition). Between October 1 and October 22, it will be available for $15 directly from the Laplink website. At that price, I would heartily recommend this software for anyone who has a relatively new PC (2007 or later) running XP. It’s especially useful if you’re planning to move from XP Pro to Windows 7 Home Premium, or from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Pro.

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