Upgrading win xp to win vista....please help me?

ok says bottom part on piece of paper (with dvd's for vista)

"WARNING: if you reformat or delete partitions on your hard disc drive during the upgrade, your files and applications will be deleted. be sure to back up your files and programs to a seperate source before the upgrade process"

my computer is:

windows xp, sp2

media center edition (version 2002)

hp pavilion

amd athlon(tm) 64x2 dual

core processor 3800+

2.00 ghz, 960 mb of ram

170 gb hard-drive

------

(ntfs )(file system) (hard-drive) (c: drive)

so can i upgrade, and what does the first part mean, what do i have to do? ill add details if sum1 asks sumthing,,,

thx ahead of time

Upgrading win xp to win vista....please help me?windows xp home

You can upgrade and before doing so you should backup thoose files which are important to you. During the upgrade Vista will ask you whether you want to format your disk (ie whipe clean). If you say yes it will be wiped clean and all old files will be gone, including the ones you could not loose.

So first backupo than upgrade

Upgrading win xp to win vista....please help me?microsoft visual studio internet explorer

I'll just tell ya, Vista sucks. I bought a new computer with it and don't like it at all.
Don't upgrade! Vista is a disaster. XP will run better. You won't need to convert for another 5 years or so. And by then PC's will be able to handle Vista and they will have worked out the kinks. And there are A LOT of kinks.
my advice to you is this: don't do it. not because you can't do it, but vista is still unbelievably buggy and unstable.and the DRM and security features will suck out your performance.

your questions:

1. the disk means everything that is installed on your hard drive is gone once you reformat it, which means all saved files, all games, all movies/music/etc.

2. yes you can install vista.
DON'T DO IT, AGAIN DON'T DO IT... Way to many issues still with Vista trust me I work on computers everyday and I here more horror stories and prolly only one or two good ones
to make it easier on you go to the microsoft website and download the windows vista advisor. it will tell you if you can run vista or not. and all that means is if you are just upgrading you wont lose anything. it just upgrades. but if you do a fresh install you will lose everything you have and it will have nothing but windows vista on there. but to make sure you can run vista id download the vista advisor first. i hope that helps
I disagree with the anti-Vista crowd. I have had it running for a year now, upgraded from XP. Once I got Vista video drivers everything has been running smoothly. XP is still a great stable OS, but my Vista box has had more uptime than my XP box.
That just telling you to back up any files or applications becuase when you upgrade to Vista or for that matter any operating system, you will lose all your information such as files, or programs or applications that you installed on your own on the computer. You can still upgrade, but it will be a clean format, which means, it will erase any information that you stored on your computer prior to the upgrade.

So the best advice I could give is to save all your important domcumets and programs/applications on CD/s prior to upgrading, unless you don't need it.
Answer: as many others have said DON'T do it.

Vista still has alot of bugs runs slower and is a resource hog.

XP has been around for years and is stable with every driver could want.

What the others are not telling you is that Vista will be replaced in 09 after less than 2 years (unlike XP which has been around for 5years) by the OS vista should have been. It is already in the works, codenamed Vienna, and has the really good features Vista was supposed to have but they ran out of time and so left a bunch out. Hindsight i believe will show Vista to be the Windows ME of this software generation and we all remeber what a stepping stone that OS was. Again my advice is don't downgrade to vista and stay on XP till 09
Before you upgrade to Vista make sure you have Vista drivers for ALL your hardware including your printer and external devices. Download them onto a CD. Also put your "F6" SATA drivers on a CD(Vista uses CDs and DVDs) if you have enhanced Sata drivers. If you do an "over-the-top" installation Vista will save your XP in a "windows.old" folder on your C drive but that will take up about 30 GBs of space so you'll want to yank it after you're up and running with Vista. After you install Vista turn that annoying UAC off and go into power options and click on "high performance" in the power schemes. Windows Updates helps a lot to get Vista to run good. I suggest you add another 1GB of ram. Some people buy a new hard drive and either dual boot or yank the XP drive out and install Vista on the new drive so, if they don't like Vista, they can put the XP drive back in. A trip to the Vista upgrade advisor is recommended too. I have a lot of computers-- a bunch of XP machines, a Mac and a Vista rig and I like Vista a lot. Biggest problem with Vista is that there are too many clueless "experts" putting it in and not knowing how to get it to run right or are too cheap to buy the extra ram an operating system that does as much as Vista does needs. All that paragraph is telling you is that all the vids pics tunes etc will be lost when it formats your hard drive so you should have the stuff you don't want to lose saved on a Disc before you format the hard drive. Also, during the install you will have an option to validate Vista right then. DON'T. Wait until you are sure you like Vista and its running smooth and you've added any new hardware you want to add before you go online and validate it(you have 30 days).
Its just sayin back up files you need, then format the disk. Dont listen to the people who slag off vista, i installed it and i have no problems with it, and i only have 512MB memory. if youve paid for it, use it, or else its a bloody waste of money