# Installing Windows 8 without losing files and programs



## McNavdo1990 (Sep 20, 2012)

I am a student in computing and I get access to free software including the Windows 8 OS. I am very much interested in installing Windows 8 on my laptop and was wondering if this could be done without losing all of my files and programs? I know you can reinstall an OS without losing anything but can you install a different version? I am currently using Windows 7 Home Premium. Any help would be appreciated


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## TerryNet (Mar 23, 2005)

> I am very much interested in installing Windows 8 on my laptop and was wondering if this could be done without losing all of my files and programs?


Yes. And you can also lose everything. Depends on what you do, how you do it, and how you prepare before touching anything.

If you install it as a guest system in a virtual machine (see the sticky thread at the top of this forum) there is almost no chance of losing anything.

I have W8 installed as a dual boot along with W7 on this machine, and have lost nothing. And if I do lose anything it will mostly just be an irritation, as my data is backed up and I monthly make backup images of my W7 partition.

I infer from your post that you are mostly asking about an "upgrade" install of W8 over W7. I believe I read that is possible. If so, there no doubt is a page of Microsoft advice about what issues may arise and whether you should disable security applications. But only a fool (or naive user) will proceed without considering how to recover if things go horribly wrong. Essentially, that is the same planning you do for how to recover if your hard drive suddenly fails completely and you need to replace it with a new one.


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