In one word, How? I know I have to buy the OEM Vista 64, but I really want more memory and it looks like Vista 64 is the best way to accomplish that. So can I just back up my important files and then stick the OEM Vista 64 disk in or is it more complex than that?
That’s pretty much it. The caveats to remember are that you have to do a clean install when going from 32-bit to 64-bit, so double-check those backups (I don’t think you actually have to reformat the drive, though), and that the OEM edition will be tied to the motherboard of the machine you activate it on. If you upgrade the motherboard, you’ll probably have to call MS to get it reactivated (though they’ll almost always allow it anyway).
Make sure there are 64-bit drivers available for all the hardware you want to use first, though.
What does ‘clean install’ mean? Does that mean I have to wipe my hard drive? Or does it mean that I need to wipe my Windows directory? I’m confused about that.
A clean install (it won’t actually be called that in the installer, it’ll probably just give you a choice between Upgrade and Install and will grey out Upgrade anyway since it’s not possible in this case) won’t make any attempt to preserve any existing applications or settings, so it’ll be like you just installed the OS on a blank drive for the first time.
It probably won’t force you to format the drive, so the applications and data files might still be there, but they might not work due to missing registry entries, DLL and assembly registrations, SxS compatibility files, etc. Your old user profile will probably be gone or unusable, too. It’s safest to just reinstall the programs afterwards.
I’m pretty sure you won’t have to wipe out your harddrive, but things that were in Program Files are now kept in a folder “Program Files (x86)” and things like that. So your Windows folder will have to go.
You can use “Windows Easy Transfer” which is in your Start->Accessories->System Tools folder. It’s the new “Files and Settings Transfer Wizard” and can help out moving the important stuff over. Not everything, but better than starting from scratch.
Unfortunately it means there is no “upgrade” option that leaves your files intact. It means a wipe and reinstall. Microsoft’s official comments here, also copied below:
If you have the “upgrade” version of the SKU, it will verify your current OS, then do the full wipe and install afterward. At least this is from what I understand Lorini. I’ve not had to do that upgrade myself.
FYI, you don’t need to buy the 64bit version. Your 32bit key will work fine. I just did this exact thing last month. Your only problem will be finding someone with the 64bit OEM DVD.
You will need to do a clean install.
If there’s been a version of Windows in the last 9 years that let you do a “clean install” without formatting the entire partition, I’d dearly love to know how. As far as I can tell you either do an upgrade install, or you lose everything in the partition.
I didn’t format anything. I believe the install with automatically rename c:\windows to c:\windows.old.
Really? For me it’s always asked to reformat the drive.
Nope, no reformat. And I literally just did this a month or two ago.
Hmm. Maybe it’s special to 32-bit to 64-bit upgrades or something.
There is no upgrade, it’s a clean install. You just don’t need to format the disk to do it.
i would treat it like it does format the machine though, lorini. have good backups just in case.
It might try to force a format if you’re installing to a FAT32 partition or something like that, but normally you should see this after selecting the drive:
But yeah, double-check those backups, just in case.
I have never had any version of Windows give me a dialogue like that (and it’s been NTFS on my computer for as long as I’ve had it, ~8 years now.). It’s always been upgrade or format.
Thats the screen I see when installing 64 bit Vista over 64 bit Vista but I can`t remember if it did the same thing with my install from 32-64 bit. I think it did.
And yes it means you can`t easily delete that folder if a game you have uses a null key for copy protection.
Deleting windows.old was a truly herculean task. Definitely. Using takeown and icacls allowed me to delete most of it, but safedisc had a couple of files in there that were a real serious bitch to delete. Have fun with that, I sure did.
I could never get rid of that annoying SecuROM folder. I figure I’ll be formatting my HD anyway once Windows 7 is out.
Thanks everyone. I have over 800 gigs of applications (mostly games of course) and having to re-install all of that is pretty daunting. Maybe I’ll just have to learn to live with less memory.