Upgrading Windows 7 to Windows 11 - advice please

You can select drives during installation, but to be on safe side, disconnect the two data drives temporarily.

The SSD will not be automatically wiped unless you choose to delete all partitions during the installation.
To avoid any issues, I would delete all partitions on the SSD.

See the tutorials section on how to install Windows 11.

However, there are some things you should check first.

Are you sure pc in win 11 compatible - W7 pcs may have too old a CPU and/or may not have a TPM 2?

Are you sure PC has suitable Windows 11 drivers (Windows 10 drivers would be ok as well in most cases).

You also probably need to convert SSD to GPT format.

Also, you may need a new Windows 7 licence as MS have stopped free upgrades to Windows 11 (and Windows 10 I think).

I strongly recommend you make an image backup of Windows 7 pc before attempting to upgrade.

Backup any data on the boot drive you may need, Disconnect the SATA plugs on any but the boot drive and proceed with the installation making sure to delete all partitions on that system drive.

1. Assuming you have a 286GB SSD, then yes Windows 11 will install on it just fine.

2. You will need to wipe the SSD yourself, during setup, simply select each of the partitions on your boot drive SSD and delete them so that nothing is showing on the SSD, then continue with the install process.

3. The other hard drives will NOT be effected by the install at all, unless your boot drive has very little space left on it, then an extra partition may be added to one of the drives. The partition would only be about 100MB or so and should not effect the data on your drive at all.

trumpy81 said:

1. Assuming you have a 286GB SSD, then yes Windows 11 will install on it just fine.

2. You will need to wipe the SSD yourself, during setup, simply select each of the partitions on your boot drive SSD and delete them so that nothing is showing on the SSD, then continue with the install process. You could open Disk Management in Windows 7 and partition your drive, provided you have enough free space on the drive. Doing that would allow you to install Windows 11 and keep Windows 7 installed as well. You would then have the option to select which OS you wish to boot up.

3. The other hard drives will NOT be effected by the install at all, unless your boot drive has very little space left on it, then an extra partition may be added to one of the drives. The partition would only be about 100MB or so and should not effect the data on your drive at all.

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Re. item 2 - dual booting is probably not going to work as most W7 installations use Legacy bios mbr drives, and Windows 11 uses UEFI GPT drives and a drive cannot be a mixture of mbr and gpt.

Windows 11 can be installed as mbr with a bit of effort but it is not a great plan as mbr drives can only have four primary partitions, and you may end up using them all - one system reserved, two OS, and one recovery partition.

A better solution is to clone C drive partition of Windows 7 to a virtual hard drive (on one of the other drives), wipe ssd, install Windows 11 as uefi, then add boot entry to the virtual hard drive with Windows 7.

@cereberus
Doh! ... you're right, I completely forgot about the GPT partition requirement.

I amended my post, thanks.

Please edit your profile with ALL your hardware specs. It will help us to help you

Is your CPU from 2018 or newer?
No more free upgrades from Win 7 to Win 10. You must have a Win 10 or Win 11 license key.
You can't upgrade from Win 7 to Win 11. You can do from Win 7 to Win 10 and then from Win10 to Win 11.
You can do a clean install, booting from a Win 11 USB installation drive as UEFI and deleting all partitions on the SSD, and then proceed.

If you need to go to ten forum and read a tutorial on filling out your system specs that Megahertz posted, you’ll then need to return here to complete them on this link. But it’s pretty straight forward;

kwil said:

I need advice on upgrading a Win 7 Home Premium (64-bit/Intel i7/8Gb) desktop to Win 11.

The Win7 specs can handle the requirements of Win 11.

(snip)

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Please fill in your system specs.

Note that if you want a supported Win11 installation, the I7 would have to be Gen8 or later.

It's possible to do an unsupported installation on an older system.

And please do not use all Bold font, on forums it's akin to shouting.

Another point, your boot/system drive is most likely 256GB, next size up is 512GB then 1TB, etc.

To the best of my knowledge the free Upgrades from Win7 and Win8/8.1 to Win 11 have been discontinued by Microsoft.

Windows 10 can be upgraded to Windows 11 in a supported or unsupported fashion.

There is no direct method to upgrade Windows 7 to Windows 11.

Many thanks to all for taking time to reply. Much appreciated.

However, just found out the i7 processor is less than Gen8 so I guess my plan's a non-starter.

Do you think it would be cheaper to upgrade motherboard and chip or buy a new computer outright?

Regards

It just may be more cost-effective to get a new computer when considering the prices of video/graphics adapters added to the motherboard, CPU and RAM. I got a new Notebook in Oct. '21 and new Desktop in Apr. '22 because none I had properly met the System Requirements for Win11, about $1500USD for both with i5 CPUs, 256GB NVMe on the Notebook, 512GB NVMe on the Desktop and 8GB RAM on each. Check the sales for the brands interested in and on Amazon.com and NewEgg.com.

Hi Berton...thanks for the considered reply. Your points are duly noted.

Given the rate of progress in chips/memory etc it was always difficult to get close to 'future-proofing' and, since Windows 12 by all accounts will soon be on us, then....here we go again!

Getting the highest spec possible for sensible money, therefore, is now what I'm up against.

I have good internet connecton at the moment (not quite 'full fibre') so I'm wondering if I need to pay extra heed to the wi-fi adapter in any new computer I buy.
Since I'll be new to Win 11, does it have any particular drawbacks or plus points regarding handling fast speeds?

Regards

As to Wi-Fi, the computer adapter probably will be 802.11ac or802.11ax so the Router should also support it. Also involved is Wireless 5G and may be progressing to 6G or even 7G soon.

Win11 on mine work with everything Win10 does, mostly is a visual thing such as a lot of settings can be found on right-click of the Win11 Start button that were in Win10's Control Panel [which is still available on Win11].

One thing not often mentioned is there no 32-bit/x86 version of Win11 but I haven't seen a 32-bit CPU offered in some time.

As for changes, that has happened in every version of Windows since my first in '92 with Win3.1 running on MS-DOS 5 followed by WFW. After retiring in '94 I was offered a part-time job in a computer store, month later full-time and started building computers. I've had most every version since then, 95, 98, 98SE, XP, 7, 8/8.1, 10 and 11 plus Windows NT 3.51, NT 4 and NT 2000. I've never had a Windows ME or Vista computer but have had to work on them.

kwil said:

Hi Berton...thanks for the considered reply. Your points are duly noted.

Given the rate of progress in chips/memory etc it was always difficult to get close to 'future-proofing' and, since Windows 12 by all accounts will soon be on us, then....here we go again!

Getting the highest spec possible for sensible money, therefore, is now what I'm up against.

I have good internet connecton at the moment (not quite 'full fibre') so I'm wondering if I need to pay extra heed to the wi-fi adapter in any new computer I buy.
Since I'll be new to Win 11, does it have any particular drawbacks or plus points regarding handling fast speeds?

Regards

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There is more you need to consider i.e. how wifi adapter and routers coexist.

It is also country specific - following applies predominantly to UK but may apply elsewhere depending on local setups.

First thing to understand - It is a bit confusing as the newish faster Wifi 6 protocol works over the Wifi 5 GHZ band i.e. the wifi protocol is not the same as the frequency band.

The even faster new Wifi 6E protocol works over the new Wifi 6GHZ band.

To get best out of gigabit internet speeds, you really need a wifi 6E adapter AND wifi 6E router but that presumes your broadband is fast too.

I have 900 mb/s on a wifi 5 router and get 580 mb/s on wifi.

I set up a 3rd party wifi 6 router (laptop has wifi 6 adapter), and I could get up to 800+ mb/s if laptop was very close to router (1 m), but once more than a couple of metres away, speed dropped off to around 600 mb/s i.e. very little gain over using older wifi ac protocol.

I could only really improve on that going to wifi 6e adapter and router, but broadband speeds > 900 mbits/s are very expensive and few UK ISPs offer that anyway.

Anyway, it's all a bit of a game as wifi 7 is on its way, but in UK at least, I think it will be several years yet before that becomes the "norm".

kwil said:

Since I'll be new to Win 11, does it have any particular drawbacks or plus points regarding handling fast speeds?

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Haven't noticed any speed issues but as always that would be subject to what the ISP provides. I have 25Mbps Wireless DSL, quite stable, particularly with 2 Desktops always connected to the Router and usually 3 Wireless Notebooks.

Thanks again for the informative input, Cerberus & Berton...

Berton: with all that hardware on constant tap, it's a wonder your eyes still work at speed!

Regards

kwil said:

Thanks again for the informative input, Cerberus & Berton...

Berton: with all that hardware on constant tap, it's a wonder your eyes still work at speed!

Regards

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They do get tired late afternoons, been known to take a nap now and then.