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Parallel Install: On The Same Partition Or Drive
Maybe "parallel install" isn't the right moniker for this method, because it doesn't give you two bootable OSes. If you boot from the Windows 7 install media and elect to place 7 on the same partition as Windows XP without formatting it, the old Windows XP installation (including the user folders) will be moved to a subfolder named Windows.old. You won't be able to boot the old Windows installation, but all of your existing user data will be preserved and can be copied out by hand.
This method's a mixed bag. On the one hand, it means you can do a clean install on a partition that you can't afford to reformat -- for instance, if you have difficulty backing up and restoring user data because you don't have blank media or additional hard disk space. On the other hand, it means that any user-state data that can't be migrated easily by hand -- Microsoft Office settings, for instance -- will be lost. For those things you'll either need to perform a Windows Easy Transfer backup ahead of time (described later in this article), or simply recreate the settings by hand.
Nuke And Pave
The title should tell it all: With this option, you don't make any attempt to preserve the state of the existing Windows XP installation. You boot the install media, format the target partition completely (hint: use Quick Format, you'll spend far less time drumming your fingers), and simply install Windows 7 clean.
The only time you'd probably want to do something like this is if you've inherited someone else's XP machine, you're putting a clean install of 7 on it, and want to make sure no stale user data is left over in any form.
Another possible reason to do this is if you don't use any software that keeps settings in the user's profile folder -- for instance, the programs in the PortableApps collection. This is rare, but I know a few people who follow such a system pretty scrupulously and don't keep anything of value in their Users folder.
Transfer Settings And Data >>
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