Now that Windows 7 has already been released and judging by the feedback is one of the best MS products up to date, millions of users are asking themselves the million dollar question: “Can I upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7?”

It turns out that we, the XP lovers, are in for a big and not so pleasant surprise. If you are running Vista, you can upgrade to Windows 7 in a few minutes time; if you, however, are running XP will have to take quite a few extra steps if you want to install Windows 7 on your computer.

And if you think that you can just back up your data, files and programs settings, format your hard drive and use the cheaper upgrade version, then you might run into a few problems or to be more specific the “The Software Licensing Service determined that this specified product key can only be used for upgrading, not for clean installations” message. If you happen to get that message there’s an easier (although unofficial) workaround – instead of entering the Windows 7 key when prompted, move to the next step, finish the installation and only then use the key.

And if you don’t want to format your hard drive, then simply print out the Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 guide from Microsoft and follow the steps.