Vista - Upgrade current XP with old Vista CD

I purchased a new PC in early 2007 that came with XP. A month or so later I received the Vista upgrade CD which I have never installed. I intend to buy Windows 7 when it becomes available and wish to minimize my system upgrade problems as much as possible. Based on my understanding I would have to do a complete harddrive erase to install Win 7 and then reinstall all my applications. If possible and practical I'd like to upgrade XP to Vista and then Vista to Windows 7.

My question am I likely to have problems going from a current up to date version of XP to a 2+ year old version of Vista which would require many updates to bring up to the current level?.

You would be better doing that format you were talking about. let me think... back up everything you want backed up ie programs etc. save it to external HDD burn it to dvd etc. before you want to install 7 download virtual box install xp on the virtual box and install your programs into there... Its not worth doing, just backup and format your harddrive and then clean install 7

True, but you can also upgrade to Vista and then upgrade that to 7. Most importantly what are the specs of the PC you are upgrading? XP vintage might have problems.

Thanks, I was afraid that might be the answer. I hadn't heard of the Virtual Box but it sounds like it might be a useful tool especially if it's free. I like the idea of having both versions of the OS available for awhile.

Virtualization requires a lot of resources. You'll need 1GB (preferably 3GB) just for Vista, and 1GB for XP. The faster your cpu is the better. Aslo defrag your hard drive before you install a virtual machine.

True, but you can also upgrade to Vista and then upgrade that to 7. Most importantly what are the specs of the PC you are upgrading? XP vintage might have problems.[/QUOTE]

It's a Dell 2.8 GHZ 530E with 3GB memory and a 250GB harddrive with XP at SP3.
My plan was to follow the path you suggest but I was a bit worried that my old version of Vista might cause more problems than it would solve.

That should be enough for Vista x86. Is the RAM DDR2, the CPU Intel, and what is the GPU? Take a look at Belarc Advisor:

www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Ram is DDR, Intel CPU and NVIDIA GeForce9400GT

Then you should have no problems.

Then again, Windows 7 advises all Windows users to do a clean install (backup everything, then reformat...) when intalling Windows 7, even VISTA users. So maybe your best choice would be a clean install.

I'll be getting an upgrade disc in October and I don't think 7 will choke on a Vista upgrade that is 3 months old.