With Windows 7 released you must be wondering if it is possible to upgrade to Windows 7 from XP without losing all users data and profiles. The answer is yes, although there is no direct upgrade option and unlike Vista you won’t be able to do an “in-place” upgrade from XP to Windows 7.

There are several ways to go about upgrading to Windows 7 from XP. One obvious way is to do a clean install which means you lose everything previously saved in XP. Another way would be to dual-boot both Windows 7 and XP which again means sacrificing a bulk of your hard disk space.There is also a long drawn out way in which you upgrade to Vista first and then upgrade to Windows 7 which can be a very tiresome upgrade.

If you think the above ways seems too intimidating and not very inviting, don’t give up yet. You can migrate all user settings and profiles from XP to the newly installed Windows 7. But the biggest hitch you will encounter is that installed applications will not be ported over and you will need to manually install all the applications you will need in Windows 7. With some proper planning you can make this tedious task easier (this will be dealt with later in the article). Let’s look at how to upgrade to Windows 7 without losing all the settings from Windows XP and the various steps you need to take for a smoother jump to the new OS from XP.