Upgraded from 32 bit to 64 bit

I just completed this process and thought I would post my experience doing this. My original install was an upgrade from xp to 7 home premium 32 bit. I decided to upgrade to 64 bit to maximise my memory usage as 32 bit would not recognise my 4gb of ram. When I put the dvd into my drive it gave me a warning that "the operating system is not supported,reboot and boot from cd". After enabling first boot from cd in my bios it went right to the installer and all went well,it even seemed to go a little quicker than the original 32 bit install.After installation completed all the 64 bit drivers were installed for all my hardware and everything is running great. The only device I was not able to install a driver for was a usb hub that windows would not accept the 32 bit drivers for. This device had installed correctly with 32 bit. It did create a Windows.old folder and a program files (x86) folder along with the program files folder. 32 bit programs get installed into the x86 folder. All in all this was a very easy process and I hope this will help anybody that is thinking of doing this

And how can you upgrade directly from 32bit to 64bit?

Perhaps you can clarify how you accomplished it.

mushroomboy said:

He did a clean install of x64 booting from CD off of the Bios. The Windows.old is his old win32 install, really He's just saying that the transition from 32bit to 64bit wasn't as bad as you (he and probably other people) think.

Exactly. All you have to do is boot from the dvd and you're on your way.

mushroomboy said:

He did a clean install of x64 booting from CD off of the Bios. The Windows.old is his old win32 install, really He's just saying that the transition from 32bit to 64bit wasn't as bad as you (he and probably other people) think.

Oh it seemed like he was describing a clean install but not. I'm surprised it saved his old stuff.

mushroomboy said:

It always saves the old stuff with a clean install, it's part of the rollback feature. Well it SHOULD save it, that is what it is ment to do.

When I do clean installs, I don't just use current disk's state. I delete the partition/format the drive.

I would not rely on windows.old as my only backup. It can fail with a failed install.

And since you need to backup files anyway, why not get a cleaner install and boot from the installer to wipe/format HDD?