Using Upgrade disks to move from Vista 32bit to Win 7 64bit

Although I'm presently running with Win 7 32bit I want to move to Win 7 64bit. I have the upgrade disks (both 32 & 64 bit) I purchased to upgrade from Vista. I now realise I'll have to re-install Vista before I can then try the Win 7 64bit upgrade.
So far I've tried booting my machine with the Vista recovery disk I have from the OEM, and at the point of "install" (when it came to the point of re-installing Vista)swapped it for the Win 7 64bit. I then hit the buffers with the install procedure not recognizing the drivers for the CD/DVD drive ........ which I found has an enormous thread all by itself on this site.
I do have 2 other external drives (J: and L: ) and a partition on the disk K:, for users and data; will I need to copy the contents of the disk to one of these ??

• Has anyone any experience of using upgrade disks to move from Vista 32bit to Win 7 64bit?
• Will this difficulty with the unrecognized CD/DVD drive be a showstopper ?
• Can the upgrade from Vista 32bit to Win 7 64bit actually be done?
• Is there a tutorial for this type of upgrade?

It's just not possible because of the drivers and archetecture difference of x86 and x64. While it sounds simple, they are big, big, big differences. For a simple example, x86 has only one "Program Files" folder. When you "tricked" it, guess what? It's missing the "Program Files (x86)" folder where 32-bit appliacations are, probably even tricking Windows that your old "Program Files" folder is 64-bit and will attempt to migrate and run them in 64-bit mode when they are not.

Try http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/11470-windows-easy-transfer-transfer-computers.html

I accept that I have to re-install all my software applications, and the upgrade/install to Win 7 64bit will be destructive. Even accepting that I re-build my machine from scratch ... can I do it ?

The terminology can be confusing. if you want to upgrade such that your installed programs, user files, settings etc. are preserved then theres no way you can do it going from 32 bit to 64 bit. But if you want to clean install 64 bit windows, then upgrade disks will do the job just fine. Go through this:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/31402-clean-install-upgrade-windows-7-version.html

This will wipe out all your installed apps, drivers, settings etc.

SaltyPete said:

I accept that I have to re-install all my software applications, and the upgrade/install to Win 7 64bit will be destructive. Even accepting that I re-build my machine from scratch ... can I do it ?

Click to expand...

Oh. Starting from scratch? Of course