can I upgrade W 7 on W XP Pro and will it work ok. also what happenes to XP in Oct when windows 7 shuts down

Don't upgrade. Do a clean install by booting from the DVD. In either case Windows 7 beta, build 7000 will expire on 1 Aug 2009. If you upgrade your XP installation, you will be forced to do a reinstall of XP on 2 Aug 2009--along with all of the updates that goes along with it. If you are concerned about maintaining your XP load after the beta expires, I recommend you get a second hard drive and do a dual boot. If you are proficient with third party partitioning tools (Windows XP cannot shrink or expand the system volume natively), then you can do some repartitioning of your hard drive and have a dual boot that way. From what I have been reading on the various forums here and on other sites is that a lot of people are not really experienced with setting up a dual boot, or more importantly, what to do when it comes time to bring a system back to its original state. Unless you are really familiar with thisunless you dont mind the risks that come along with experimentingyou may be best served beta testing on a spare machine or a dedicated hard drive. Bear in mind that there are significant architectural changes to Windows 7 that may be problematic when doing an upgrade from an older platform. Although Microsoft wants people to test out upgrades along with clean installs, you may end up in a situation that will leave you with a nasty taste in your mouth.

I agree about upgrades and that Microsoft wants testing of them. However, they have said repeatedly not to install on production systems. Creating a new install or a image of an existing system and upgrading is the way to test.

You can only upgrade Vista SP1 to W7 and come August when the Beta expires, you will need to reinstall. Asrock K8NF6P, AMD64 3200+, 1.5GB RAM, 500GB Maxtor SataII ,Asus 1814BLT optical

For the BETA upgrades from Vista SP1 only, but I read that they haven't decided what upgrade paths will be available when it releases. From past history I would say no, but since there was not a large upgrade to Vista because of the fear from the public. They may need to allow an upgrade from XP to get people to buy in that may not want to get a new computer but meet th especs for 7.

I have done the upgrade on my Lenovo x61 Tablet and it broke most of the Tablet functionality - and gave no error messages until I tried to use them. Also had issues with the Intel Turbo Memory and the Fingerprint Reader.Have had fewer problems with a clean install - but several pieces of the hardware (listed above) require some coaxing and massaging to make them work.If you're using the beta on your primary system, I'd suggest either making sure that your recovery media is in place and functional - or making use of the Complete PC Backup and Restore Tool (and making sure that it works) BEFORE committing to use of the beta. - John

I just installed 2nd HD as you sugested I figured I could just needed to se it inTyp from a proas Im a construction worker self taught still learning PC builder asyou know XP just gives you a selection of OS to open/boot the harh part was getting myself to go threw the install porg to see custominstall but was pretty straite forwardonce its done W7 is going to be a great OS and after thetweeks like stardocks,Wondow blinds,decktop odject