OS update

[idunno]

Hi

Over the past 3-4 years I have slowly built up FS2004 with many airport upgrades by many different companies, including most of the superb FSD products!

I currently run my PC on Windows XP Home Edition OS but I am seriously thinking of upgrading to Windows 7, as this is a 64bit system and therefore FS2004 should run a lot smoother. The biggest headache is that with so many registered products, I do not still have all the registration keys. I presume I will have to either re-install FS2004 or copy it over, and without these registration keys I will lose these airports?

Can anyone tell me if there is a way around this? Can I install Windows7 over Windows XP and therefore not have to re-install or copy?

Many thanks

Richard

[virtuali]

Copying over an existing installation is a potential recipe for disaster, especially with addons. You should always run their proper installer.

How to reinstall our products after a total system upgrade, is explained here ( and in the manual, of course...)

http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php?topic=649.0

Note that, Windows 7 doesn't allow to do an upgrade installation from a 32 bit to a 64 bit version of the OS, and doesn't allow an upgrade from XP in any case. This table here lists your install options:

http://mossblog.allthingsd.com/files/2009/08/windows-upgrade-chart.png

"Custom install", mean you either install on a new drive/partition, or you entirely replace your existing OS so, in both cases, it's a reinstall from scratch, meaning you'll lose everything like user accounts, passwords, software activations, etc.

"In place upgrade" means that Windows 7 will just upgrade your OS, leaving all your settings intact and, as you can see, it's only possible from Vista, and you also have to match the version in order to upgrade so, if you had Vista Business, you can only upgrade to Windows 7 Professional, and so on.

[idunno]

Many thanks

It looks as though it will be easier to stick with what I have, a complete re-install of everything would take a long time which I unfortunately don't have!!

Rich