Hey! At the tender age of 62, I have DOS roots. 
lol
There are a few threads on the petfermonce with Windows 7 at CivFanatics. In my experience it works okay on the 32 bit version, not so well on the 64 bit verson (I have both).
This is only somewhat related to the OP’s situation, but this is probably a good place to mention this. I’ve tried to help two different people upgrade their Vista to Windows 7 without reinstalling from scratch, and it didn’t go well.
If you have Vista Ultimate, you HAVE to upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate. Nothing lower/cheaper will work.
If you have Vista Home Premium, you can’t upgrade to Windows 7 Professional. Not sure what the logic there is.
This chart will detail what you upgrade paths you can and can’t take. If there is an *, that means you can install Windows 7, but you’ll have to install from scratch and reinstall all your applications: http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/windows-7/get/upgrade-considerations.aspx
Thanks for this. I just ordered my upgrade cds, but didn’t know if the vista home premium needed a clean install, like my xp lappie does. Now I know!
From what I’ve been reading on various forums, I wouldn’t do an upgrade install to Win7 from any previous windows versions. As stated above, it’s impossible to do so from XP but upgrades from Vista have also been rife with problems. Even when the upgrade goes well, some people have reported that it can take several hours to complete.
A clean install is a better option, anyway, despite having to reinstall all your old programs and transfer your data. I’d recommend getting a new hard drive for your new Win7 installation and transfer your old drive to an external USB or ESATA enclosure. That way, you’re guaranteed to get all your data back and you’ll have a handy backup drive for future use.
And it’s perfectly possible to do a clean install from an upgrade CD. There are a number of websites that walk you through a number of different procedures but the simplest way is to just install it twice. The second installation will recognize that Windows is already on your system and will then complete the installation as a legitimate upgrade.
There is a possible method to upgrade Vista Home Premium to 7 Professional. Basically copy the W7 DVD to a USB drive or another DVD and delete the ei.cfg file so that you can install any version of W7. Install 7 Home Premium, but don’t give it a key. Then do an “Anytime Upgrade” to 7 Professional and give it your Professional key. I’m not responsible etc etc:
spraying a bit of Trioxin on this thread too
Got a couple of related questions here: My wife has a laptop which came pre-installed with Windows Vista of some flavor or another. It has the Product License key sticker on it and everything. Anyhow, before we were married, some guy in the dorms tried to impress her by installing a coughcough version of Windows 7 Ultimate on it, and after a while, she’s having problems with it which may or may not be due to this guy being kind of an idiot. But that’s a story for another thread.
Anyhow, I want to buy a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium (after some discussion, we figured that’s what she needs; she won’t use any of the features on the fancier versions). Big question is, will the Upgrade version of Windows 7 Home Premium work here? Do we need to find some kind of system restore option for her laptop first? It’s a price difference of 40 or 50 bucks, so I figured I should check to see if the Upgrade version would work or not. We’re probably going to do a clean install in any case.
If you have the original Vista media and it was Vista Home Premium, it will work just fine; if not, there’s a little work involved.
Yeah, let’s upgrade for a completely irrational reason, rather than out of necessity. It makes me sick that corporations have convinced people that newer is necessarily better.
I’ve got XP, it does what I need, and I’m not going to upgrade until I need something else. Just like I did with Windows 98 before it, and Windows 3.1 before that.
Many newer games had sound stuttering issues on XP with it’s maximum level of Direct X at 9.0c. The sound stuttering goes away after Win7 is installed with Direct X 11.0. There are graphics features you can’t enable without the Direct X 11.0 support either.
Don’t let how people phrase stuff confuse you. Many say you can’t upgrade from XP. It’s stated very poorly. You can buy the upgrade version of Win7 and do a clean install of the Win7 OS. Most geeks always do this anyway to clean out the garbage. It doesn’t do an update install from XP to Win7 where all the old programs still function and all your settings are set how they were. There is too much difference in the OS and programs designed for XP to have this work consistently so Microsoft doesn’t do it.
As for will an upgrade work you need to run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor.
Thanks, I ran it and found I would lose my parental controls and one other thing. I thought it was a great feature to have and I don’t know why windows 7 does not support it? I am going to wait because I am finally comfortable with Windows Vista.
I also had it recommended to completely clean my hd and do a clean install.
I kinda glossed over the thread, but I’ll add two cents from a tech support standpoint;
I don’t directly support Windows, but I end up working with it a lot because I support things that run on it.
The only real problems (with one sole exception that proves the rule) I have run into have involved computers that were upgraded to Windows 7 rather than having a clean install.
But then I run into the same with our software. Upgrading software versions tends to be a lot tweakier than clean installs.
Besides, you should wipe your hard drive clean every couple of years on general principle. Crap starts to build up.
XP has some security issues. You know, kinda like a 1990’s car has some safety issues compared with today. Take the car analogy further, there’s just an awful lot things that just work a lot better, more efficiently, safer, etc in a new car versus a few generations ago.
IIRC XP has an upgrade utility that I vaguely remember using when I went to Vista. Menu > all programs > Accessories > System Tools > Windows Easy Transfer
It may be called something else in XP but should be there in the system tools folder. That should copy over not only your files, but your favorites, settings, IIRC drivers, etc.
I used the Windows Easy Transfer tool with both my XP and Vista -> W7 installs and it really was easy.
Civilization II just plain crashes when you try to load it on Windows 7. Downloading a Windows 7 patch fixes it.
Actually, the BSOD doesn’t occur for me any longer. I think it may have been more to the laptop over heating. (Although it did have a faulty keyboard which was replaced under warranty as well).