32Bit Vista to 64 bit Win 7?

[greshoff]

I currently have 32bit Vista ultimate installed, would it be possible to install 64bit Win 7 Ultimate via an upgrade route?

[CaptainCrash]

Nope, going from 32-bit to 64-bit requires a clean install.

[greshoff]

Thanks, Apart from the ability of the OS to use more memory what are the other advantages of using a 64 bit OS?

[morda8]

do u not get 32bit win 7?

[Zadock]

do u not get 32bit win 7?

If you get retail you get both 32 and 64bit versions I beleive?

The I think the main advantages are essentially utilisation of 64bit cpu architecture and the ability to address more than 3Gb of ram. I expect others more knowable than me will be able to provide more detail or a better explanation than that.

[lodore]

make sure all your applications work on 64bit.

if you tell us what applications you use i can tell you if they work on 64bit or not.
make sure you tell us the version number. sometimes the older version dont work on 64bit but newer versions do.

some programs have special 64bit versions that take advantage of 64bit operating systems for example winrar.

[watercooled]

I can't think of many popular applications that won't work on a Vista/7 64 bit - I can't think of any that don't work for me.

[Singh400]

make sure all your applications work on 64bit.

if you tell us what applications you use i can tell you if they work on 64bit or not.
make sure you tell us the version number. sometimes the older version dont work on 64bit but newer versions do.

some programs have special 64bit versions that take advantage of 64bit operating systems for example winrar.

x86-32 programs work fine on x86-64 OS. It's the drivers you have to worry about. But nowadays everything has a x86-64 counterpart. Hell, even my 6 year Dell printer has a x86-64 driver.

[lodore]

x86-32 programs work fine on x86-64 OS. It's the drivers you have to worry about. But nowadays everything has a x86-64 counterpart. Hell, even my 6 year Dell printer has a x86-64 driver.

some programs cant work on 64bit due to patchguard. for example sandboxie.
I have been using vista 64bit for ages. there isnt much that wont work on it. but there is still a few.

[Agent]

You'd occasionally run in to 64bit specific issues with Windows XP64. You'd get them very rarely on Vista 64 (usually driver related as Singh says) which has been out a few years now. Every application that I know of has an update that sorted out any issues, so finding non 64bit compatible apps for Windows 7 will be very difficult.

The only 2 things you need to watch out for is:
1)No 16bit support. Some older games may be 16-bit (and I mean old games), but more commonly some installers were 16-bit. There are usually easy work arounds for this.

2)Some 'plug-in' based things have slightly worse 64bit support. For example, some 64bit codecs are still very immature. Another example is no Flash player for Internet explorer 64bit. This is easily solved by using the 32bit version though.

Other than that, the move to 64bit is seamless. It's more a case of "why should I go 32bit". With the falling cost of memory over 4gig is going to quickly become standard.

[Paul Adams]

The only other gotcha for 32-bit apps in a 64-bit version of Windows is if they call a system components which gets WOW'd - such as registry APIs (rerouted under SysWow6432Node), ODBC data sources and any reference to %systemroot% (rerouted under SysWOW64).

For the most part, using the APIs correctly should allow the apps to continue working flawlessly - but things like 32-bit registry cleaners can make a real mess as they get stuck in an infinite loop, and the Data Sources control panel applet is the native version so to configure them for 32-bit processes you need to run odbcad32.exe under SysWOW64 instead.

I've been using the 64-bit version of Windows on my home (gaming) machines since Windows XP x64 Edition and only ever had an issue with a couple of legacy games that wanted to install a 32-bit kernel driver for the copy protection.
Went to Vista x64 and now to Windows 7 x64, everything I had continues to work just fine - and the basic stress test for me works: online gaming sessions that run for hours without exiting (Crysis Warhead, WoW, Far Cry 2, Aion Online beta, Champions Online beta, etc.)

Windows Server 2008 R2 is 64-bit only, which is a great move, we can hope Windows 8 drops 32-bit entirely for all SKUs

[CrimsonAvenger]

MS recommend a clean install as best practice and have done for years so thats what I would recommend too.

Upgrades can bring any crap thats already there with them too.

[Paul Adams]

MS recommend a clean install as best practice and have done for years so thats what I would recommend too.

In this particular case as CaptainCrash pointed out in the first reply, upgrades from 32-bit to 64-bit Windows are impossible, not just untested or not supported - you have no choice but to clean install.
(Same if trying to go in the opposite direction, this is basically a replacement of every single binary for the OS so attempting a migration would be a nightmare.)

But yes, in general I prefer to manually copy away any data, ensure I have the media/serials for any applications I have purchased and installed, then do a clean install.
(For large apps/games that don't need to be installed, I tend to put them onto partitions mounted as folders so I don't even need to reinstall them with an OS wipe too.)

[Bill@W]

[QUOTE=lodore;1764804]make sure all your applications work on 64bit./QUOTE


Applications I have been using daily in xp and vista 32-bit systems don’t work in vista 64-bit.
WordPerfect (a far batter wp than MS Word) freezes on the file>open command. Paradox (a great database mgr) will not load at all.
RAW image files do not appear as thumbnails in file managers like My Computer, but only as icons. Paradox has not been updated since V.11 to my knowledge, and seems no longer to be supported by Corel. (Another example, like Netscape, of a superior product steamrollered out of existence by the Redmond behemoth). The latest download of Nikon’s NEF codec for RAW files works in x32 vista but not x64.
I would be glad to hear of any patches, fixes, or compatibility workarounds anyone has discovered.

[MSIC]

I intend to install win7 64bit from day 1 because
a) it's needed to take advantage of the 6 gig of ram I installed
b) it's the future, and so it'll save me from having to do a re-install in the future whenever (if ever?) something comes out which requires 64 bit.
That second point admittedly may not happen, but I'm more certain that that the advantages of 64 bit will become more apparent over the next few years.
Oh, and I'll be migrating from 32 bit win xp, so I wouldn't dream of 'upgrading' even if it were technically possible, just too much of a headache.
As stated, plan it in advance, back it all up into folders, and if you are at all uncertain about having missed anything then install the new OS on a new hard drive so that you could potentially switch back in an emergency.

[kingpotnoodle]

Been using Windows 764bit and have used Vista 64bit too... if you have or plan to use more than 3GB RAM then it's essential, if you have only 2GB and don't plan to buy more (i.e a Media PC) then use 32bit as it has a smaller memory usage not having to store 64 bits of things.

Only things I ever had trouble with running on 64bit Windows are:
* Putty Connection Manager (Putty is fine, just not PCM)
* Some drivers for TV cards picked up better signal with 32bit or caused blue screens in 64bit