In this episode, we give you an outline of some things you should know about

installing Windows to your PC

. For one thing, most PCs come equipped with

Windows 7

by default. In this episode, we'll be showing you

how to install Windows 7

yourself to a

fresh hard drive

or

hard drive partition

.

With all the important housekeeping taken care of, we're now ready to begin the actual

upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7

. If you've followed along with this tutorial series and looked after all the backup, defragmenting and cleaning up, the process of

upgrading Windows Vista to Windows 7

will be a piece of cake. And who among us doesn't like cake?

Doc Callahan continues the process of

upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7

and finishes up the installation of Microsoft's new operating system. In this tutorial, we'll continue the installation that we started. When we're finished, we'll have a fully functioning copy of Windows 7 running on our machine that, until recently, was running Windows Vista.

Picking up from the start of the Windows 7 installation

upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7

, we finish up the actual

install of Windows 7

and boot to our new Windows 7 desktop for the first time.

Previously we showed you how to back up files and settings for the Upgrading from XP to Windows 7 using Easy Transfer for Windows XP. Now, the last step in the

upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7

is to transfer the settings we saved in Windows XP over to our brand new Windows 7 operating system.

Upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7

will be much easier if you install to a defragmented hard drive. Defragmenting means pulling your data that's scattered across the physical drive into a logical and clean structure. Take the time to defragment your drive and your upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 will be a smooth and simple process.

Now that we've gotten our proverbial ducks in a row with solid back ups of our files and an Easy Transfer image of our Windows XP settings, it's time to make the move. In part six of our eight-part series on

upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7

, we begin the actual installation process.

Just because we have to

do a clean install of Windows 7

to migrate our Windows XP machine doesn't mean we have to lose all of our files, settings and so on. With

Windows Easy Transfer

available for download on Windows XP and built in to Windows 7, it's easy to migrate this data.

The process of

upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7

will be much smoother if you're installing to a drive that's clean, defragmented and free of junk and other extra files. The less Windows has to move in the upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7, the less likelihood of something going wrong.

When considering

upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7

, you'll need to do some fact-finding first. What type of processor do you have?

Is your Windows XP machine Windows 7 capable

? Michael "Doctor File Finder" Callahan runs through the checklist to get you started in this tutorial.

The first step in actually

upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7

is to ensure you have a reliable back up of any important files and folders. If you don't already have a

back up routine

in place, there's no time like the present to start one.

Upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7

is a relatively simple process. However, as with all things computing, things don't always go exactly the way we want them to. It's important to have a full backup of your important data should disaster strike.

If you have Windows XP then upgrading to Windows 7 will be more of a chore than upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7. Windows XP users can only upgrade to Windows 7. In this installation overview, Michael "Doctor File Finder" Callahan lets us know what we're in store for. Watch this series to learn all you need to know about

upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7

.

As you can't do a direct

upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7

, you'll need to decide whether to start fresh, moving your workflow from XP to Windows 7 losing the former in the process, or you can opt to "dual boot" Windows XP and Windows 7. This means you can choose which operating system to run when you boot up your computer and your Windows XP install remains intact.

You may be able to upgrade your copy of

Windows Vista to Windows 7

without having to do a clean install. Of course, it depends on what version of Windows Vista you have as well as what version of Windows 7 you get your hands on. Only some versions of Vista can upgrade to Windows 7 without doing a clean install. Watch our series to learn all you need to know about upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7.

If you're going to

install Windows to a PC

then the best way to do so is by doing a

clean install

. That means installing it to an empty hard drive or to a fresh partition. In this series we'll be showing you

how to install Windows 7

to a clear partition and, along the way,

how to partition a hard drive

.