Upgrading my desktop to 7 Pro

I'm strongly considering upgrading to Windows 7 Pro on my desktop. However, I have a couple of concerns. First, my Windows 7 install (Home Premium 64 bit) is the OEM version that was shipped with my desktop. Do I qualify for upgrade pricing? Some on this fourm have stated you have to have full retail in order to accomplish this. And before it's suggested, I don't want the Anytime Upgrade that's downloaded like a service pack with no media. Secondly, I have a lot a data on here that I want to transfer over to the new install, in particular my programs and VM's. I'm not impressed with the Windows Easy Transfer, the only time I used it, only my IE settings and bookmarks were transferred. So I'll be using a backup program, either the Windows default one or Marcium Reflect. Is it necessary to backup the whole OS, or just the program files and personal libraries and settings? If necessary, I'll go full retail, but the upgrade prices are more attractive. Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions.

On upgrade pricing, you should if MS is still offering it. You can download the upgrade an order a backup DVD for an additional cost as I did. I think my backup DVD cost me an extra $13. Every forum I've been on recommends a clean install which means loss of all data. If you go that route I would suggest moving the data you want to keep onto a separate drive and then do a clean install, then attach drive with backup data and move files. As for me I downloaded and went with the upgrade route with backup DVD in route. I have not experienced any of the difficulties, failures or catastrophes that others have. My upgrade was pretty damn smooth but took a long time (4 hrs). the only difference between OEM and retail is that OEM is locked to a specific PC (non transferable) where as the retail version is transferable. Meaning you can uninstall it and put it on another PC. Hence the price difference between the two versions. As for backing up the OS, I don't see any need in it as you will be getting the new OS. Just back up the data you want to keep. Either way you go you should be fine. Good luck.

I already have a full retail version of Pro that I uninstalled from my laptop last night. I replaced it with a full retail version of Home Premium that was given to me, it updated fully, activated and validated fine. I even allowed the recent WAT update to install to make sure everything was all right. But with this laptop, I have a driver disc that I purchased on eBay for my specific model of laptop. What I want to do is move up to Pro, but don't want to lose anything. I failed to mention that I have Microsoft Works 2007 (bundled in with the "crapware), there's also a HP Support Assistant and PC Doctor that was included too. If it came down to it, I could redownload a few of the programs that I installed myself, but I don't want to chance losing my drivers, also there's my webcam, will the backup pickup and reinstall everything through the backup and restore program? I know how to backup, that's no problem. I just don't want any BS when it comes time to restore all of my drivers and important data. I was reading about the Anytime Upgrade, you lose nothing, but I would only use it as a last resort. I do know your data is preserved with this install, but I can't transfer it later, should I need to. My ears are open to all ideas, I'm not going to do anything until payday, unless I can use the full retail version that I already have. Thanks, bassfisher6522, for your input.

Cat, you of all people should know to keep your drivers stored somewhere else, like an external hard drive or a thumb drive or a CD-RW disc.

Go ahead and use the retail Pro version you have, there should be no issues at all. Don't waste your money on redundant programs.

Yeah, you'll have to reinstall your software, may take a while. I know you can handle it though.

I keep all my software programs on an external hard drive, been doing that for years now. I learned my lesson the hard way and swore I would never, ever go through losing my program installers, keys, drivers, etc.

Nibiru, I have a current backup of my entire Windows 7 install. In fact, I have a backup of all of my Windows installations. I will check and backup my drivers on a thumb drive that I have. Thanks for your input, Nibiru. I've done many XP and a few Linux installs on older machines, but none on newer ones that has webcams and other accessories. So this is a new venture for me. I'll go to backing up my drivers on my thumb drive.

Man, this has been one screwed up install. I got Pro cleanly installed, somehow or the other, my networking became messed up. I couldn't connect to the internet to update. So, I figured everything I needed was on my backup. It was, but I backed up twice, using Windows backup, then Macrium. My external drive is only 160GB, I already had XP and Win 2K backed up on it, they were small. But 7 was a 101GB backup, and somehow I screwed up and backed up twice, and the worst was that Pro didn't find a suitable file to get files from. So, after two clean installs of Pro, I figured to simply hit F11 to restore what I had. The recovery partition wouldn't boot up. By that time, I was ready to sling the computer out the window. So I remembered that when the Mint screen starts up, there was a Vista partition to click onto. That turned out to be my recovery partition. Thank God for Linux, it may have saved the day for me. It finally loaded up a minute ago, and the network works. Whew, that was a lot of work for nothing, not counting the loss of two months of work. Well, I'll back up again and start over tomorrow. mabye I'll get it right next time.

Well, I did it the easy way, the Anytime Upgrade. Had their not been bad publicity over it, I'd have done it first. The process took less than 10 minutes total. That was a lot of work I lost over trying to manually upgrade, but that's water under the bridge now. Once I figure out how to do it, I'll get Windows Virtual PC. But anyway, I got it done, and it wasn't so bad after all.