theirs more to learn than what youre asking..however, help will be provided for your convinient..

What is the “image” you mentioned? We do not know what it is!

I recommend making a backup image of your computer. Use a program like driveimageXML or Acronis. I personally use Acronis Echo for everything. Make sure you have a good working image on an external driver or DVDs. Also Backup any data files, pictures etc. Separately, ( YOU should be doing that anyway. )

At this point, If you really want to be safe. Go buy a new hard drive, (cheap) Take your existing drive out, and keep it safe.

Now you can test a fresh install of Windows 7, or you can restore your drive image to the new drive, then try an upgrade install of Windows 7.

I can tell you, my Windows 7 Experiences.

my wife got a new computer, we installed Windows 7 RC on it. She loves it.

I upgraded 4 computers in my office to Windows 7 for fun, and they all worked. I then used the image to put them back to original. (because I don’t want to use an RC for working production computers )

I really wanted it on my home computer, so I did an upgrade install and it totally failed. My computer crashed like you would not believe. Blue screen every start up! I highly suspect a software conflict. I was not willing to do a clean install, so I restored my image and continue to use Vista on it.

So I have 6 success, 1 Failure. Lots of learning, no data loss.
You cannot learn without trying, just do it safely!
Backups and Images are your friends!