Before you install Windows 7, be sure to back up all of your important data. You can read this article on "How To Install Windows 7" to get it done the correct way without loosing any information.

After Windows 7 is installed there are a few steps you need to take to get your computer running correctly. The days of Automatic Updates are over and Windows no longer will search and install the correct drivers for all of your hardware. Instead they opt to install some generic drivers that are usually extremely outdated.

When you first install Windows 7 and get it running Windows 7 will have automatically installed generic drivers for all of your hardware that may be out of date. For this reason it's important to know what type of graphics/video card, chipset/NIC and possibly printers/cameras your computer is currently using. In order to get those drivers you will typically have to go to the manufactures website and manually search for them yourself. This, however, could prove to be frustrating as finding Windows 7 drivers could be a problem as most hardware still won’t support it. The good news is that most hardware drivers will work just fine on Windows 7 with Windows Vista drivers.

With Vista, the number one complaint was with UAC. That annoying box that always asked you, "Are you sure you want to do this?" is back. However, it can be controlled and configured to not be nearly as annoying although it would possibly open you up to get a virus. You will probably want to set it on the second to top-most setting. This will only make the pop up appear when you are installing something or when a program or file tries to alter your computers settings. If you want the highest security you can set it to the top-most and it will pretty much pop up when you try to do just about anything. Or maybe you just don't want to see it at like, like in Vista, you can move the slider all the way to the bottom and never see it again.

If you backed up your data before you installed Windows 7 then now would be the ideal time to resituate it. If you used a fresh hard drive to install Windows 7 then simply connect your hard drive to your pc via SATA cable (you have updated your IDE computer to SATA?) and copy/move over your files. Hopefully you decided to back up your data on a more convenient device such as a USB external hard drive. Just don't make the mistake and overwrite your folders such as Documents, Downloads, and Pictures...etc. You will want to drag out the individual files instead.