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Recover data from Windows XP professional to Windows 7

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I have Windows XP Professional on my computer. I want to upgrade to Windows 7.
To do so I must unintall Windows XP and then install Windows 7. How should I save the programs and data before I uninstall XP so that once I install Windows 7 I can bring back all my data and programs

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You will not be able to restore applications. You will have to reinstall them into the new operating system.

You can use True Image to backup your user data, either in a files/folders backup or simply as part of a disk/partition backup. You will be able to restore that user data to the new OS.

You could also use a file-based backup tool to do a backup of user data in its native formats. There are good file-based backup tools available such as Robocopy (command-line tool, free as part of Windows), Microsoft SyncToy (free download from MS), etc.
In fact, I do both True Image disk/system backups and file-based backups in Robocopy. Where my data are concerned, I like the security of belt and suspenders. :)

Just to be safe, I would create a full disk mode backup before you wipe the drive and install Windows 7. That way you can always restore XP and your entire working system if you need to.

There is some software by Laplink, that is one time use, that advertises it can migrate systems to W7 or W8. I have not tried it, as I prefer to start from scratch when changing OSs.

There is a further problem in that some software may well require different components to be installed in order to work properly with W7 or W8 including where they live in registry. So although it may with difficulty be possible to migrate, the software may still not work until reinstalled. Of course data files and databases can be imported into a new OS with no problems, but it is always best to reinstall the software that 'owns' them.