Can I upgrade to Windows 7 from XP?

Can I upgrade to Windows 7 from XP Professional, or do I need to do a fresh install?

A quick answer would be greatly appreciated

You can, but a fresh install give you better performance after wards.

You will have to do a clean install but with this will let you install most of your programs again without much fuss.

I was under the impression you would first have to upgrade to vista, and then to 7.
If you do do a fresh install have a look at the Windows Easy Transfer first, it can be a good way to save time setting things back up afterwards.

god please dont ever upgrade a version of windows to any other version of windows

I know why it is given as an option, but i really wish it wasnt, or at least I wish they made it not suck...which is impossible just because of the way windows and compatibility works.

Thanks guys! I really appreciate the fast and detailed answers

Quote Originally Posted by sishgupta
All of this.

You should get an extra drive and backup anything you want to keep.

Best way to do it is to have Windows on a partition [or seperate drive] and all your important stuff [Work, Music, Games] on another partition [or drive] so that you can just format the Windows partition/drive and start clean without worrying about a lot of lost files.

Example of stuff you'd still have to worry about backing up from the Windows partition/drive: Games. Valve is nice enough to store your game settings within the Steam folder [I have it on a separate partition], but most other games will store that stuff in your My Documents folder which is almost always found on the Windows drive/partition. Another example would be your Firefox profile... hidden deep within your User AppData, this folder can be handy if you have pimped out your Firefox and don't want to bother remembering all the settings, extensions, tweaks you've added. [But like windows, Firefox benefits from a clean install]

always re-install imo