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I have an windows XP machine, with a lot of apps that are installed to it, and there are a lot of data inside it.

The problem of this machine is that it is aging (> 3 years), and so I plan to get a new machine. But I want to move all my data and apps from the old machine to a new one, the one with a brand new hard disk, motherboard, CPU, power supply and a brand new Windows 7 professional edition.

How to best do this?

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Most software cannot be migrated from XP to Windows 7, most are Windows registry dependent and may have other XP dependencies such as dll's and ocx's not found in W7.

Some applications can be installed fresh in Windows 7, then copy paste program data from the old installation to the new one, it varies from program to program whether you can do this and where the program stores the data. Some programs you will have to export registry keys and import them in Windows 7, not a trivial task even if it can be done.

Windows 7 may store program data and registry entries in different places further complicating the process of migration.

I have had success with some software and not so good with others.

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in the light of this, I think you would suggest a reinstall? – Graviton Apr 9 '11 at 5:59
You really have no choice when moving from XP to W7. W7 will not allow an upgrade like in the days of win98/ME/2000 to XP. It has to be a clean install of W7. You can still attempt to migrate your programs over manually after W7 is installed, but is not easy and does not always work to well. – Moab Apr 9 '11 at 14:11
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