Upgrading From XP To Vista To Windows 7? With Old Hardware = Compatibility Issues

But after a series of tests on older and newer hardware, a number of noteworthy issues emerged: Microsoft's statement that if hardware works with Windows Vista it will work with Windows 7 appears to be, at best, misleading; hardware that is older, but not near the end of most business life cycles, could be impossible to upgrade; and the addition of an extra step in the upgrade process does add complexity and more time not needed in previous upgrade cycles.

The installation, in and of itself, took place without incident. Before the actual installation began, running the compatibility report warned of issues with Infrared and Synaptic pointing devices on the ThinkPad. There also was a caution about two, third-party VPN clients that were installed.

No biggie, right? Wrong. After installation, the laptop would not fully boot into Windows 7. It booted fine in Safe Mode, yet the offending driver, file or service that caused the screen to go back, and caused the hard-drive activity to wind down to a barely discernible pulse, could not be identified after almost two days of troubleshooting.