Upgrading from vista

amstel2

Hello

I have had my Laptop a few years & I am perfectly happy with it & don’t want to go to the hassle & expense of changing it. My O/S is Vista Home Premium & I realise that Microsoft will stop extended support for it in April next year.

Apparently my laptop is compatible with Windows 7 which would buy me a few more years before having to buy a new laptop. I want to put this off as long as possible as I admit I am Technophobic & don’t like change.

Therefore I am asking for very simple instructions for how to get Windows 7 & install it. Also how do I save & move all “my stuff” on the laptop e.g. desktop, pictures etc. to Windows 7.

Also my preferred browser was IE but that no longer works with Vista & I had to change to Firefox which is ok but I would rather have IE. Will IE work with Windows 7.

Thanks

Chrishazle

First off, you will need to back up all the stuff you want to keep (photos, documents, music etc) to somewhere other than your primary C drive. If that's the only hard drive you have in your laptop, then you need to save them either to CD/DVD (assuming you have a CD/DVD writer in your laptop) or to an external drive (like a USB hard drive).

Upgrading from Vista to 7 is easy - I did my desktop and wife's laptop a few years ago. I bought genuine discs complete with licence sticker from Ebay, Home Premium for my desktop and Professional for wife's laptop ('cos it was cheap). Make sure the one you buy is SP1. Put the DVD into the drive and follow the on screen instructions - best to do a clean install rather than an upgrade, but as this includes a full format of your C drive (thus deleting everything that was on it) make sure you've backed up all you want to keep first!!!

It's also worth printing out the list of programs installed on your laptop - Control Panel - Programs and Features - so you know what to re-install after installing Win 7.

The fun starts when you re-connect to the internet, as there are a load of updates to download after a clean install. I recently did a clean reinstall of Win 7 as I'd installed a new SSD, OK I also have MS Office, but there was something like 1.7Gb of updates, about 260 of them, and a lot of fun getting them all downloaded and installed despite being on BT Infinity 2 fibre broadband!!

IE works in Win 7, but personally I prefer and use Firefox! You'll find Win 7 much better than Vista!

esuhl

I'm not sure if Microsoft are still selling Windows 7, but you should be able to pick up a copy on eBay/Amazon, etc. Just be careful as there might be some pirated/cracked copies around.

To "save and move" all your stuff, just back it up and restore like you normally would. Or if none of it's important and you don't have backups, just delete it.

As mentioned above, a clean installation will wipe everything from your hard drive, so make sure your backups are up-to-date first!

Extended support for Windows 7 lasts until January 2020. It will still work after then, but there won't be any more security updates for it. If you wanted to continue using it, you'd have to be very careful -- maybe use a sandbox for running programs with network access, etc.

cookie365

I wouldn't bother. You'll still get security updates, and the laptop will still work with Vista.

And in any case updates are to all intents and purposes broken on Windows 7 already.

The cost of even an ebay Windows 7 licesnse won't really be worth it.

NiftyDigits

cookie365 wrote: »

I wouldn't bother. You'll still get security updates, and the laptop will still work with Vista.

And in any case updates are to all intents and purposes broken on Windows 7 already.

The cost of even an ebay Windows 7 licesnse won't really be worth it.

Nonsense....

NiftyDigits

Does this laptop have a brand name and model number?

googler

MS stopped supporting XP a while back, but both the XP machines I'm running are still working fine.

Yours will still be fine after MS drops support for Vista.

[Deleted User]

Hi,

amstel2 wrote: »

Also my preferred browser was IE but that no longer works with Vista & I had to change to Firefox which is ok but I would rather have IE. Will IE work with Windows7

I have Vista HP, and can still use IE9, though there is no support now.

googler

amstel2 wrote: »

Also my preferred browser was IE but that no longer works with Vista & I had to change to Firefox which is ok but I would rather have IE. Will IE work with Windows 7.

If you do persist with Vista, that's the one thing I wouldn't use.

As I said, two XP machines, running a mix of Chrome, Opera and Firefox between them. Not a sign of IE anywhere.

Can you guess why?

amstel2

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Does this laptop have a brand name and model number?

Sorry I haven’t responded earlier but thanks for all the info.

Just to confirm my Laptop is a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Notebook LI 3910, with an 18.4 inch screen.

I prefer the large screen as I find it better for my eyes. However, when I finally have to get a new one the largest screen you seem to get now is 17.3 inch. Are there any models that are bigger?

Thanks

NiftyDigits

amstel2 wrote: »

Sorry I haven’t responded earlier but thanks for all the info.

Just to confirm my Laptop is a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Notebook LI 3910, with an 18.4 inch screen.

I prefer the large screen as I find it better for my eyes. However, when I finally have to get a new one the largest screen you seem to get now is 17.3 inch. Are there any models that are bigger?

Thanks

Looking at the BIOS revisions, it appears that the licence for Windows 7 is already installed...as long as you have BIOS version 1.10 upwards.



AMILO LI3910

We can take a look to see if this is the case and which version is installed.

You can utilise Windows Easy Transfer to move your data to and external HDD and back again or you can simple replace the HDD with an SSD and run a clean install of Windows 7 using a Fujitsu Windows 7 reinstallation disc.(we'll get to that). Place the old HDD into a caddy and move data back at your leisure.