How best to use Macrium products?

I've decided on using Macrium to clone my Vista 32-bit laptop to a new, larger drive Dell (Windows 7) 64-bit laptop. Can I use Macrium Standard for this?

There's so much info about cloning via Macrium, some of it conflicting and confusing. And, as a newbie, I'm not sure about the answers to the following questions. I would appreciate your help in cutting through the fog:

Do I download Macrium Standard to old laptop (Vista 32-bit ) or to the new laptop (Dell 64-bit)? Or, can I use Macrium Free to clone old hard drive and use Macrium Standard on new laptop to restore image?

Then, when installing, do I select the architecture for the 32-bit (original laptop) or 64-bit (target laptop)?

Then, other than creating a Rescue Media CD and Backups, do I need to perform sysprep, or is this already taken care of in the Macrium software?

That's what I'm trying to do & why I've asked for assistance with cloning my old computer.

Most imaging/cloning programs that I'm aware of aren't going to do anything more than imaging/cloning/restoring. I don't use Macrium but many here do for the same reason I use the one I do, so I'm pretty sure it's the same. I think you're going to need to do a sysprep and then clone or image for the new machine. The following tutorial for a w7 system may help you do what you're trying to do:

Windows 7 Installation - Transfer to a New Computer

@F5ing - If I clone my Vista after SysPrep, wouldn't that prevent the issue that
@ kado897 mentioned?

kado897 said:

If you clone you are going to replace your Windows 7 install with your current Vista 32bit. Do you really want to do that?

Doing a SysPrep before Cloning would prevent this from happening, or not?

P.S. Great Sig

mjf said:

I think you are better transferring your apps and data manually. For paid/licensed apps you will need to deactivate and then reactivate.

Wouldn't cloning preserve my settings & customizations? I have all the requisite s/w licenses but I don't want to spend hours tweaking individual programs again. Why do you think manual transfer is better?

Think I finally saw the light.

Cloning my old computer to a new OS is not going to work. And, an image of my old computer using traditional imaging products can't be restored to Windows 7, either.

I came across some possible workarounds but I don't have time to test them out. So, I'm gonna follow the suggestion of @ mjf and do manual file transfer.


Thanks to all for the nudge in the right direction!