Microsoft remains mum on Windows 8 upgrades from Vista, XP

I thought they said No?

And doesn't Windows 7 not support upgrading from XP?

As someone said above: Windows 7 doesn't support upgrading from XP. If Windows 7 doesn't support upgrading from XP, then Windows 8 won't either. I doubt it will even support upgrading from Vista.

Windows 7 supports upgrade from Vista being the closest previous version. As far as any other older version a clean install is a mandate.

Likewise 7 would be the closest previous version to 8 which would allow for the upgrade over 7. The upgrade from one version to the next has always been a yes while two versions back is always a no. Clean install required. The upgrade disk will still want veriification with the older version's disk however.

I would think it likely comes down to the fact that XP is based on the NT 5 kernel and Vista, 7 and 8 are based on the NT 6 kernel. I don't see them giving you an upgrade option for XP but it shouldn't be that hard to include Vista. If they want to that is. Common sense seems to be missing from a lot of the decisions they make.

With 3.1 you could simply start the setup.exe from the Run command line to see the next newer version 95 or 98 even replace the 3.1 install. That was the Legacy days of Fat 16. For upgrading over 98 however a clean install of 2000 or newer was a requirement while ME had an upgrade path available.

The rule of thumb however is that the next version always allowed a path for the previous version but not for two versions back in most cases. MS isn't that worried about Vista since it wasn't a best seller like you are now seeing multitudes of businesses replacing XP with 7!

With any new version of Windows the best method still to be advised however is simply to perform a clean install from the start. That will insure the best results over bringing problems in from the previous version you may not even be aware of. What made it much easier with 7 over any other version was how fast a clean install would go on in 20min. on average over the previous 39min time frame.

W8 however with the CP saw a full hour here when the first install by dvd on a 22x burner took way too long just to get to the Install Now screen! Other installs to VM and the still waiting install to vhd didn't take quite as long as that while the new version will be somewhat larger due to the Metro UI now seen. The very reason for 7 was Windows simply got too large with Vista and MS is repeating the same mistake with 8 in order to bring in all the touchscreen support.

One other thing to note here will effect gamers as far as the next version. With the 64bit 7 despite DX11 you could still see 9c install in order to run all those older titles. With the CP however the "not compatible with this version of Windows" message appears which means many titles may end up seeing OpenGL issues preventing the game from running while several old titles will still install.

Isn't that typical of any newer version? Some things just won't run! What the 32bit 7 saw however was rare in that you could literally run it on an old system with XP device drivers! With Vista where things wouldn't even go on the 32bit 7 took them all on! 8 is a newer OS where you can't simply say it's running the exact same kernel as Vista and 7 at least as far as backward compatibility which in many cases seems to have been lost over what 7 offered.

When you plan a clean install of 8 now you will also need to look at which programs offers a newer version that will run on 8! While UltraMon as one dual display program hasn't seen a new release quite yet DisplayFusion mentions support for 8 in their just released new version for that program being a good example.

As for businesses the expense of retooling and buying all new software versions to replace the existing will be a delay for them in upgrading. What also gave them a boost and now seeing more adopt 7 is the XP Mode allowing the run of older XP desktop apps in a virtual environment which is where MS seems to have been focused with 8 besides the portable markets. "The Cloud" is the place to be according to the newer mind set MS sees.

Obviously taking all this into consideration you can see why the upgrade paths would be rarher limited to the present new version on the market(7) at the moment to the next to come version(8). The details on the actual supported upgrade paths however still haven't been made official by MS. It's still a bit early for that information since 8 is still waiting for the next Release Preview stage before making any final announcements.