If you are looking for in-place migration of Windows XP desktops, you could use Laplink’s PC Mover. But if you want to preserve your Windows XP desktop and switch back to it when you need to run an application that doesn’t work on Windows 7, then you should consider Zinstall’s XP7. It creates an XP virtual machine (VM) with all of your old applications and files just a mouse click away. “Consider” is the operative word, however. The product idea is sound; the implementation is lacking.
That description of Zinstall XP7 sounds a bit like what Microsoft supports with its XP mode for Windows 7, but not quite. The problem, as you can see from this Web page on Microsoft’s site, is that XP mode is only supported with limited “V-chip” CPUs. You also need to reinstall an entire XP desktop on the virtual machine from scratch.
Zinstall works by using the “windows-old” directory that the Windows 7 installer creates to rebuild your original Windows XP desktop. It is a neat trick, and I really wanted it to work. But no matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t get a stable VM from the product, and so I can’t recommend Zinstall until they do some additional quality control.
If you want to experiment, make sure you use a drive imaging tool (I use Acronis or Symantec’s Ghost) to create a backup copy of your Windows XP desktop first. Next, disable your firewalls and uninstall any anti-virus software. Now you install Windows 7, making sure to boot from the install CD and choose the custom in-place install option, where it copies the Windows OS and all your applications to that “windows-old” directory.
Once that is done, you can start up Windows 7 and install the Zinstall software. Zinstall actually supports two different migration scenarios. Besides the in-place one, the other scenario lets you migrate between two computers. Choose the “only have this PC” to indicate that you are doing an in-place migration; then hit the big GO button as you can see in the screen shot below.
Zinstall will migrate your XP desktop and still keep the old XP running as a virtual machine under Windows 7.
The process takes several minutes to an hour to complete, depending on the size of your hard drive. Speaking of which: Make sure that you have plenty of extra room to install Windows 7 as well as the working copies of Zinstall’s files. I would estimate a spare 30-40 GB should be enough. You can filter out particular files – like videos and mp3s — that you don’t want to migrate if you are tight on space.
Once this process is done, you can switch back and forth between Windows XP and Windows 7 by clicking on an icon on the taskbar. Booting up your Windows XP desktop initially takes some time; after all, you are loading a new VM here. But once that is done, switching between the OSs takes a second or two. If you have used VMware or something similar this will be very obvious. You leave your existing Windows XP desktop unchanged, with its existing apps (that may not run under Windows 7). Everything on your old Windows XP system is preserved, including files and applications. These aren’t migrated to Windows 7; you have to install new apps now just as you would for any new OS install. This differs from PC Mover, where you give up your older Windows XP system and migrate it completely over to the new operating system. You can even view and access the files on the other OS too, again by clicking on the taskbar icon.
Or so they promise. Too bad this wasn’t quite my experience.
I began this review trying to migrate the oldest PC that I had in my office, an old Windows XP system [2.80 GHz Pentium with 2 GB of RAM without any service packs. I couldn’t get the migration to complete without errors. I wasn’t sure if it was because of my three drive partitions, an unused video driver for a card that I no longer had in the PC, or some other gremlin. Next I set up my Dell Dimension desktop with a virgin copy of Windows XP with SP2, and got a fresh version of Windows 7 installed on top of it. The Zinstall setup worked just fine until I tried to reboot the PC, and then I somehow trashed the master boot record. All my efforts for the day were lost. After I jiggled my BIOS battery, I was able to get a working drive again and I could start taking complete breaths. Two serious attempts to make it work; two failures. What if the user was a not-quite-so-journeyman IT support person?
I really wanted this software to work, because it is such an elegant solution that no one else can deliver on. If it worked, it would be the perfect way to move slowly into the modern era of Windows 7. But alas, I can’t recommend the product.
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Nice review!
Though I didn't quite understand the outcome of your second attempt…
You said that zInstall worked fine, but then you trashed your MBR which got fixed by jiggling your BIOS battery?! That doesn't make any sense at all. The MBR has nothing to do with the bios battery, and there's no way on earth a software application can somehow drain out your bios battery to the point where you gotta "jiggle" it to make it work again.
I haven't used zInstall myself, but I'm considering it after a recommendation from a friend who migrated both his laptop and desktop using zInstlal and was very satisfied. So I'd be glad if you could elaborate a bit more…
[...] and audits. It also works with both virtual and physical machines too. Unlike the PC Mover and Zinstall approaches, they are designed for large-scale deployments of hundreds or more PCs. A more complete [...]
Zinstall did not work for me and the company does not honor their guarantee. The web site lies about not charging you unless the migration is successful. They will not honor the stated satisfaction guarantee. They are thieves.
[...] Si vous êtes en quête d'une place de migration d'ordinateurs de bureau Windows XP, vous pouvez utiliser Laplink's PC Mover. Mais si vous voulez préserver votre bureau Windows XP et y revenir quand vous avez besoin d'exécuter une application qui ne fonctionne pas sur Windows 7, alors vous devriez considérer XP7 Zinstall's. Il crée un XP [. . . ] URL article original: http://itexpertvoice.com/home/product-review-migrating-from-windows-xp-to-windows-7-with-zinstall/ [...]
I used Zinstall . The main reason for buying it was to use my video editing programme with all the add ons I had. My migration went seamlessly and the whole of my old desktop now sits on my new machine, one click away from swopping between environments. HOWEVER, please be aware that programmes requiring powerful graphics, sound etc do not work within it. My video editing software just did not 'see' any of the graphics or sound or even my camcorder attached to the firewire. When looking at System you can see that the only graphics is called 'Zinstall graphics adaptor'. Word, Excel and Outlook run okay – but, again be aware, with e-mailing it takes an age for the propgramme in the virtual XP enviroment to send e-mails. If your expectations of what you use on a Zinstall virtual environment are limited, then the programme works okay if not…! Luckily I was able to reinstall my video editing software within Windows 7 and it works fine – time consuming resinstalling but at least it works. I wish I had seen more comments like this when I was looking at reviews.
Maybe it wasn't the MBR but clearly something was wrong with that disk. I think Zinstall is conceptually a great idea, just in execution they are lacking. Check out some of the other reviews that I have done of the other migration products, we should have some new ones up this month too.