Upgrading from Xp to Windows 7 questions

[soarwitheagles]

I have a friend with a HP entertainment laptop that is running windows media edition XP 2005. He purchased this laptop new from Costco in 2005. It runs slow. He is asking me the pros and cons of updating to Windows 7.

We ran the Windows7UpgradeAdvisor and it says we are good to go to upgrade to Windows 7.

We have some questions:

1. With only 2 gigs of ram, will the computer run better or worse with Win 7?
2. Do we risk major problems with driver conflicts?
3. Will windows 7 automatically update all the drivers?
4. Should we do a clean install or use the upgrade utility?
5. Should we know anything else about this adventure before we attempt to do it?

Any and all advice, suggestions, warnings, etc. would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Soar

 

[KSoD]

Well before you even get started you REALLY, REALLY, REALLY need to read the FAQ. You can NOT upgrade from Win7 from XP. It will require a format and reinstall of the OS. So right there alone stops the whole topic title.

1. Answered in the FAQ. Win7 doesnt need that much RAM. If a netbook with 1GB can run Win7 then i think a PC with 2GB will do just fine.
2. Possibly. It all depends on if the manufacturers made Win7 drivers.
3. Not necessarily. Windows Update ONLY does Windows files and a very select set of hardware drivers.
4. already answered up top.
5. Yes read the FAQ. It was created for this reason. I know it is long. But it gets very tiring having to answer the same set of questions over and over again cause people refuse to read the topic in which all of these questions have already been answered. Makes me feel like I shouldnt have bothered with the FAQ at all since i am having it ignored and still having to answer all the same things.