Solved Experiment: Upgrading Windows 7 to Windows 11 directly

spapakons said:

In the video there are two options, to keep your data but NOT your applications, and to keep nothing. You chose the first option. This is not a complete upgrade! I would prefer to keep both my data AND applications (grayed option, not available). I will try some more tricks and report.

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Yes however you can reinstall your apps and install them into your user folder, and they should migrate. It is definitely better than not being able to keep anything.

The most trouble is to reinstall all the apps and configure them. An easier way for what you describe is to boot with Windows 11 setup (or hybrid installation media, for non-compliant systems) and install Windows 11 on the larger partition without format. This will keep all your data at Windows.old folder. Then you reinstall all applications and cut-paste (move) your data from C:\Windows.old\users\username into the respective folders.

spapakons said:

The most trouble is to reinstall all the apps and configure them. An easier way for what you describe is to boot with Windows 11 setup (or hybrid installation media, for non-compliant systems) and install Windows 11 on the larger partition without format. This will keep all your data at Windows.old folder. Then you reinstall all applications and cut-paste (move) your data from C:\Windows.old\users\username into the respective folders.

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This method done by the YouTuber NTDEV, is similar to my method, but has an extra step. This allows Windows 7 to be fully upgraded to Windows 11.

Unless you keep all your data and applications, it is not considered an upgrade, rather a clean installation. There are two cases of clean installation. In the first you keep your files (Windows.old folder) and in the other you keep nothing (format). If you do an in-place upgrade and you keep everything, this is an upgrade. You cannot do the latter directly from Windows 7 to 11. If you want to keep everything you must upgrade to Windows 10 first and then to Windows 11.

spapakons said:

Unless you keep all your data and applications, it is not considered an upgrade, rather a clean installation. There are two cases of clean installation. In the first you keep your files (Windows.old folder) and in the other you keep nothing (format). If you do an in-place upgrade and you keep everything, this is an upgrade. You cannot do the latter directly from Windows 7 to 11. If you want to keep everything you must upgrade to Windows 10 first and then to Windows 11.

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What he does in the video is an in-place upgrade from 7 to Windows 11.

spapakons said:

If you do an in-place upgrade and you keep everything, this is an upgrade. You cannot do the latter directly from Windows 7 to 11. If you want to keep everything you must upgrade to Windows 10 first and then to Windows 11.

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Actually the video shows that you can, with a little help from some early W10 install media.

The only reason W11 install media cannot upgrade direct from W7 is that with W7 now out of support Microsoft has removed all information about W7 from the UpgradeMatrix.xml file inside the install.wim for W11. In the video this has been restored by copying it from a W10 version of the file, which allows it to upgrade keeping files and installed apps. This does involve being able to edit the W11 install.wim and save your changes though.

Sorry, isn't possible. I downloaded Windows 10 v1507 64-bit, replaced the install.wim with Windows 11 install.wim, tried to upgrade Windows 7 64-bit to 11, same error. The first option (keep both files and apps) is disabled. Unless there is some more hacking I should do, it cannot be done, triple checked. I'm not going to waste any more time trying. All these hours I would have upgraded to 10 first.

spapakons said:

Sorry, isn't possible. I downloaded Windows 10 v1507 64-bit, replaced the install.wim with Windows 11 install.wim ... Unless there is some more hacking I should do, it cannot be done, triple checked.

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Yes, there is some more hacking to be done.

You have to replace it with a modified W11 install.wim, one that has had the W7 SKU information put back into Windows\Servicing\Editions\UpgradeMatrix.xml in the W11 install.wim. In the video they used a 3rd-party utility called GImageX to do that.

I saw the video. This should work, I will confirm it and report. I was sure it wasn't that simple and it involved more hacking. Hopefully we create a hybrid USB Flash drive and we can use it in clean installation of Windows 11 as well. Anyone tried it?

In the video he replaces imagenumber\windows\servicing\Editions\UpgradeMatrix.xml with a modified one.

It probably can be done more quickly with 7-zip or wimlib instead of mounting.

I have tried with Winrar, unfortunately it doesn't open .WIM files. Probably neither does 7zip. Even if it did, how would this be faster than gimagex?

spapakons said:

Probably neither does 7zip. Even if it did, how would this be faster than gimagex?

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7-Zip can open .wim or .esd files as an archive, but it is purely 'read-only'. What it cannot do, but GImageX can, is add content or make changes to a .wim or .esd.

Unfortunately Rufus download is very slow, time has passed and I should be sleeping. I will test the method suggested in the video tomorrow and post back.

What am I doing wrong? I run Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit on VMWare virtual machine and I follow all the steps of the video. That is open Windows 10 v1507 64-bit ISO, copy all files to a folder. Then replace install.wim with the one from Windows 11 ISO. I mount it and add the Windows 7 entries in the upgradematrix.xml I unmount with commiting changes. When I run setuprep.exe from sources folder (like in the video) Setup reports I cannot keep my files because the version of Windows I'm trying to install is different! What is the f@cking difference? I do exactly as in the video!

spapakons said:

I cannot keep my files because the version of Windows I'm trying to install is different!

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That message can also be due to a difference in the base language of the installed Windows vs. that of the ISO doing the upgrade. You can get that error too with a straight W10 to W10 upgrade, for example if using en-us media to try upgrading an en-gb install.

Both languages are EN-US. I will try with GR as well, but I am not that optimistic about it...

I suspect I downloaded the wrong language version using Rufus. I found some Powershell commands to check the version. I will check if my current Windows 7 installation and Windows 10 and Windows 11 ISO are all EN-US.