Upgrading from Vista to Win 7? will that preserve drivers?

[GundamF91]

I'm thinking of installing Windows 7 to my Dell Latitude D610. As you may know, it is a pretty old laptop, made when it was Windows XP. It took me a while to get it running with Vista using the WinXP drivers.

If I could, I'd do a clean load of Win7 but I'm not sure if it'll have drivers for my components. Now I am wondering if I do the "upgrade" path to get to Win7, would the existing drivers still work?

 

[(sic)Klown12]

If everything works in Vista, you won't have problems with Windows 7 not supporting the hardware. But yes, an upgrade should keep your current drivers, though upgrading has been known to cause issues of it's own.

 

[ViRGE]

If it's that old, then there's a good chance that Win7 already has all the drivers you'll need to get up and going. You'd still likely want to update them further, but you wouldn't have any issues getting the laptop going.

 

[Nothinman]

If it's that old, then there's a good chance that Win7 already has all the drivers you'll need to get up and going. You'd still likely want to update them further, but you wouldn't have any issues getting the laptop going.

There's also a virtually equal chance that Win7 won't have proper drivers for things like video and sound. I know for an older work laptop I had to hunt down XP sound drivers from some random website and jump through a bunch of hoops to get them to work properly.

 

[corkyg]

Basically, the answer is "Yes." I did it with an old HP dv1000. And also with a Lenovo T60. All drivers preserved - all programs operational. All data intact.

 

[GundamF91]

Sounds great, it seems I can safely upgrade. Then I am wondering whether Win 7 that was "upgraded" would be as reliable compared to Win 7 from a clean install?

 

[corkyg]

I did both, clean install and upgrade. The upgrade was more reliable for me. Since then it has been updated and refined several times, and there are no reliability issues.

 

[JackMDS]

Network card, Audio, and video are the three most volnarable component to bor upgrade or Clean install.

Even if the Vista drivres are compatble with Win 7 and in exsistance that might nor have the correct security signature.

It is Not a bog problem but it is advisable to donload and be ready with the Win 7 driver packages for the Video. Audio, and Network .

Especially the network card drivers. If it does not upgrade and install than there is No Internet.