Can I upgrade my Toshiba laptop from Windows XP to Windows 7?
We have a question from a Mullies member today
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I am going to update my daughters Toshiba Satellite A100 laptop and she has no drivers or disks.What can you recommend? Just go ahead with the upgrade and search for drivers later or what?
This is a pretty common problem with older computers especially laptops. In this case the Toshiba A100 was released before Windows 7 and Toshiba never released drivers for the Windows 7 operaing system.
However Windows 7 is actually quite good at getting systems to work and as a rule any computer that could run Vista reasonably well will run Windows 7 at leas as well - so an upgrade is worth a shot.
A Google search found lots of people looking for drivers but a number of users said 'just load Windows 7 and Windows will find the right drivers"
I always suggest a clean install - not an upgrade one
I always suggest a clean install - not an upgrade one
Almost certainly Windows 7 will boot and run
Once done you can download the latest graphic driver for the video card (I think it's an ATI)
Then check Device manager and see if there is any devices with an "!" that aren't working and search specifically for a driver for that piece of hardware
Hopefully there won't be any (or many) to find
As always back up first to avoid problems later and to preserve your data
Then check Device manager and see if there is any devices with an "!" that aren't working and search specifically for a driver for that piece of hardware
Hopefully there won't be any (or many) to find
As always back up first to avoid problems later and to preserve your data
I reccommend an image back-up - then you can always 'rewind' to Windows XP if something goes wrong
As an alternative you can always consider a new laptop.
Clean and refresh the old one and put it on eBay - some people are still paying $200-$300 for good working machines. And yet you can buy a new Windows 7 Core i5 laptop with warranty for less than $700 - cheap!
Happy New Year!
