Most consumers will experience Windows 7 one of two ways, either by upgrading their existing PC or by purchasing a PC with Windows 7 preloaded. At work, most of our business customers have their own in-house IT support (or a dedicated partner that they work with) to deploy new versions of Windows.

For the customers that want to upgrade their own PC (and have experience installing Windows), an overview of the process is provided below.

For customers running Windows Vista:

Once Windows 7 is available on October 22nd, customers will be able to upgrade from their current edition of Windows Vista to a corresponding edition of Windows 7. For example, it is fairly straightforward to upgrade from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium or from a 32-bit version of Windows Vista to a 32-bit version of Windows 7. The process involves inserting the appropriate Windows 7 installation disc, running the setup program, and choosing the “Upgrade” installation option. An Upgrade is the fastest and easiest type of installation and will preserve your files, settings, and programs.

For customers running Windows XP:

Customers who wish to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 will need to follow a different upgrade process due to the changes in PCs since the introduction of Windows XP in 2001. To upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 you must first determine if your PC meets the minimum system requirements using the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. Assuming it meets the requirements, you can install Windows 7 using the “Custom” installation option. A custom installation does not preserve your files, settings or programs so you need to first back up your data to an external drive and re-install your programs once installation has completed.

If you are upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 and installing it yourself, we have detailed step-by-step instructions here.

If you are a business customer, please note that there are other migration options for you that include a broad range of deployment tools and guidance to assist your migration to Windows 7. This also includes solutions to assess application and hardware compatibility. Please visit the Springboard Series.

For customers who want to upgrade to Windows 7:

We’ve received a lot of questions from our customers about getting Windows 7 before October 22nd. While you won’t be able to go into a store and purchase a copy until then, you can take advantage of our pre-order option which is available now via the Microsoft Online Store as well as a variety of participating retailers.  If you’re an eligible college student, you can also take advantage of a sweet deal on Windows 7 for $29.99 by visiting http://www.win741.com/. And, if you have multiple PC’s at home, then on October 22nd for a limited time, you’ll be able to get the Windows 7 Family Pack Offer, which will provide 3 Upgrade Licenses for $149.99.  Look for more details on this soon.

For more information on moving to Windows 7, I suggest you read our Windows 7 Upgrade FAQ which answers many of the commonly asked questions regarding moving to Windows 7.

Hi, Mike Nash here from the Windows Platform Strategy Team.

Earlier this week, I was in New Orleans at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC). It was amazing to see the strength and scale of the Windows ecosystem at this event, particularly as we get closer to the launch of Windows 7.

As I return to Redmond, I’d like to give an update on our approach to partner outreach and enabling the Windows ecosystem.

Driving early engagement

Our partners have been clear from the outset that they needed access to stable Windows 7 builds as early as possible. So we started our ecosystem readiness journey by delivering an API complete pre-release developer build of Windows 7 in October at the PDC, a year before our scheduled General Availability (GA). We followed that with Windows 7 Beta at CES in January, and Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) in May.

This access has enabled partners to be in a great position to complete final testing of their products and services when Windows 7 is released to manufacturing (RTM) later this month.

Focusing on application and device compatibility

When we designed Windows 7, we worked to minimize changes in the way applications and devices interact with Windows. As a result, the work done by 3rd party software and hardware developers to make their products work on Windows Vista generally carries forward for Windows 7. In most cases, the same software and hardware that works on Windows Vista will also work on Windows 7 today.

Some software that is written to very low levels of the operating system, like antivirus and disk imaging software, may require some updates. We have been able to engage closely with those partners and have addressed compatibility issues earlier in the process. As a result, today 10 antivirus companies offer beta versions of their flagship products that are compatible with Windows 7 RC.

New content and programs for partners

Millions of developers and partners have been able to get detailed technical guidance, white papers, tools and code samples from the Windows Developer Center, so they can plan, build and test on Windows 7 sooner. Moreover, thousands of partners are participating in the Windows Ecosystem Readiness Program, which has reached nearly 45,000 software and hardware developers. And over 6 million people have checked out the content at Ready. Set. 7 about how many of our partners are preparing for and innovating on Windows 7.

How customers can get ready for Windows 7

We’ve also been working to ensure customers can take advantage of all of this great work by the Windows ecosystem.

We have created the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, an end-user tool designed to help customers assess their ability to upgrade their Windows XP or Windows Vista-based PCs to Windows 7. A Beta version of the can be downloaded here.

We also have the Windows 7 Logo Program, to help customers know what is compatible with Windows 7. While many products will work with Windows 7, products that carry the “Compatible with Windows 7” logo have passed testing for compatibility with Windows 7 – and because 64-bit support is a logo requirement, logo’d devices will work with both 32 and 64 bit!

Business customers can also use the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, but they need more information on compatibility for enterprise applications. So we’ve also put together a comprehensive list of the most widely used enterprise applications, which we have continuously tested on Windows 7 throughout the product cycle. In addition, there is the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) to help customers assess compatibility of software.

For internally developed line-of-business (LOB) applications, Windows 7 provides a number of in-box compatibility tools. For example, if an application fails to install because of a hard-coded version check (some software installers check the version of Windows you’re running), the Program Compatibility Troubleshooter can troubleshoot the problem by using a version number expected by the installer and running the installer again, with user consent.

How developers can get ready for Windows 7

If you’re a developer and you haven’t yet started testing for Windows 7, I recommend you do 5 key things:

1. Go download the Windows 7 Release Candidate and try it out.
2. Get compatible and test your products.  You can visit www.readyset7.com to learn more about getting ready for Windows 7.
3. Test for the Logo Requirements with our Windows Logo Kit for software and hardware.
4. Tell the world!  Make a statement of support on the Windows Compatibility Center.
5. Unlock your creativity and innovation with the new features in Windows 7. Get started by taking advantage of new opportunities in Windows 7 by evaluating the Windows 7 Developer Guide and Windows Hardware Developer Central.

Being at WPC is a good reminder of all the work it takes across tens of thousands of companies and millions of developers and IT professionals to get ready for a new Windows release. So let me conclude by saying THANK YOU to all of our partners from around the world for your engagement, testing, innovation and feedback – all which will help make Windows 7 a great release for our mutual customers.

--Mike

When a new version of Windows is released, people either upgrade their existing PC or purchase a new PC with the latest version of Windows already pre-installed. For the people who want to upgrade their existing PC, they are often faced with the question of whether their PC can run the new Windows version or not. As we announced last week, Microsoft plans to offer a tool that can be used to determine if a PC is able to run Windows 7– Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor.

A beta of Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor is now available to help people analyze their PC in preparation for a Windows 7 upgrade. Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor is a free tool that people can download as of today to help them determine if their PC is able to upgrade to and run Windows 7. The beta can be downloaded here (English only at this time).

Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor examines a PC’s processor, memory, storage, and graphics capabilities, identifies known compatibility issues with installed software and devices and finally provides guidance on how to resolve those issues if possible. Please also note: as previously stated on the E7 blog, Windows XP users are required to do a clean install of the Windows 7 RC as well as the final product. Only PCs with Windows Vista can be upgraded to Windows 7.

After running Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor myself, the initial results of my scan can be seen in the below screenshot.

The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor measures a PC’s ability to upgrade to Windows 7 based on the following final system requirements for Windows 7:

• 1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1GB RAM (32-bit) / 2GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20GB (64-bit)
• DirectX® 9 graphics processor with WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) 1.0 or higher driver

In this screenshot, you can see how my PC has passed all the Windows 7 system requirements.

Before you run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Beta , be sure that you plug in any USB devices or other devices such as printers, external hard drives, or scanners that are regularly used with the PC you are evaluating. The screenshot below shows all the devices attached to my PC when I did the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor scan.

The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor is easy enough for any PC user to use in evaluating the ability of a PC to install and run Windows 7.