Windows 7 lock during upgrade from vista-help please

I have a dell XPS l{ess then 1 year old} quad core Intel processor plenty of memory and all. that I am trying to upgrade to win 7. The compability manager says I am fing for the upgrade. During the installation the computer seems to be locked up about 3 quarters of the way through. The progress bar is simply stopped. I started the install about 11:00pm and it's now 5:25am. Should it take this long? This is the 2nd time I have tried this and the same thing has happened both times. The only way to abort it to restart the machine and then of course I will have lost all the vista files and updates. any suggestions? Should I just let it keep going? Calling Dell is a joke of course. Thanks in advance!

Do you backup all your data before upgrading?

Best way install OS is clean install.
Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version

Take a look at these posts:

https://www.sevenforums.com/installat...-problems.html
Tutorial quick reference list for Installing Windows 7
Questions to use for help with Installation Issues
Clean Install Windows 7
USB Windows 7 Installation Key Drive - Create

Filling out System Specs
Can you post your specs.

Maybe I will simply do a full clean install and not the upgrade. I backed up my files using windows backup to a external hard drive. When I have upgraded how do I get those files back? Documents pictutres ect? Thanks