I have a desktop with XP Prof pre-installed on a partitioned HD. There is no DVD. Just the small partition containing the "system recovery" files, and a third partition containing user files. Let's say I decide to upgrade to Win7. First, will Win7 recognize the existing partitions and not insist on taking over the whole drive (as RC1 has done to me)? Now assume Win7 installed successfully. Lightening strikes. It blows out my fancy APC UPC and The HD goes poof as well. I decide to go for a much bigger replacement drive. Or, in a much more likely scenario, Win7 gets sloppy. My restore copy won't restore. A new clean install is the only rational choice NOW how do I re-install Win7 from an upgrade disk or download? One would think that the original XP license key would be sufficient, but, I wonder. All input gratefully accepted

Leo854, It hasn't been clearly defined whether or not you will need an installed OS on the machine, but if so, you would have to install Windows XP again and upgrade it.

I have a desktop with XP Prof pre-installed on a partitioned HD. There is no DVD. Just the small partition containing the "system recovery" files, and a third partition containing user files.Let's say I decide to upgrade to Win7. First, will Win7 recognize the existing partitions and not insist on taking over the whole drive (as RC1 has done to me)?Now assume Win7 installed successfully.Lightening strikes. It blows out my fancy APC UPC and The HD goes poof as well. I decide to go for a much bigger replacement drive.Or, in a much more likely scenario, Win7 gets sloppy. My restore copy won't restore. A new clean install is the only rational choiceNOW how do I re-install Win7 from an upgrade disk or download? One would think that the original XP license key would be sufficient, but, I wonder.All input gratefully accepted First: It is not recommended to install/upgrade to a pre-release version of Windows on a working system, it should be done in a test or evaluating environment.Second: At install, you have the choice to select on which partition you will install Windows 7, and you need to choose it accurately, to not install the operating system on a wrong partition. If you are doing an upgrade, you must do a clean install, since it is not possible to do anupgrade from XP, keeping the files and settings. You must create a backup copy of your files, then do a clean install.

Leo - The installer for Windows 7 is a lot like the installer for Vista. As such, it doesn't have a built in checker where you can slip a previous OS's CD or DVD into the drive to check for a valid previous OS. As such, therefore, to do an upgrade, you have to have a previous OS installed and you have to run the SETUP program from within that OS. If you're upgrading from XP, you insert the DVD and when the spash screen pops up, you click on "Install now". Windows 7 setup then examines the system, determines you've got XP on the box and reboots and allows you to do a clean install. From Vista, it's a similar procedure except you can actually do an upgrade to 7 without wiping your existing partition.But all is not entirely lost. There IS a procedure for installing the Vista (or 7) upgrade onto a blank drive. That information can be had easily using a Google search...