Resolved On using an upgrade version to Win 7 from XP

Say you "replace" XP home using an upgrade version. In a year, say your hard drive crashes or something. Once whatever the problem was is fixed, and you need to reinstall your operating system, you will have to first put on your old XP and get it activated, before you can then do your upgrade/replace to Win 7. Is that not correct? Any potential problems arising from this type of situation?

 

I know you don't upgrade from XP. That is why I said "replace" in the first line of the question. Replace means doing a clean install.

But the question is about, if you have a hard drive failure or such and have to reinstall, the way things are, you won't be able to just reinstall your Win 7. You'll have to put back on your XP, get it activated, and then replace (clean install) to get back to Win 7 again.

One potential problem I see in that is: what if activation of XP is ever ended. You won't be able to get an activated XP going to do a clean install to Win 7. There may be other problems with this being the only way to get your operating system going again.

I just wondered if anyone had thought that far ahead. It was really nice when all you had to do is stick in the cd from your prior operating system. Now you'd have to put it back on again and get it activated.

 

I didnt upgrade from XP, had vista but still wound up doing
a clean install.

If the harddisk ever goes bad, I maintain 3 different
backups on an external harddrive "Grandfather, father, son ".

So, i would just popin a new HD and boot from the acronis
recovery disk then do a restore of my system. Its very
quick (considering reinstalling everything) and the most i
would have to do might be some partition mods after
a recovery. This has worked very good for me before and
eliminates registration,finding CD's, installing and program
settings.

I know this dont answer your question but it is a way to
solve a bad disk problem....

savagcl

 

Definately a different disk for the backups.

A backup image on an unreadable disk is not very useful.

So, like he said, 10 minutes you're back up and running
(minus any changes since the date of the backup).

savagcl

 

I think the answer is yes. I've done it several times. I've used the full install on 10 different machines, the only thing that matters is the license.