Win 7 64 bit notebook won't run some of my older software

I just acquired an Asus 1215N notebook running Win 7 64 bit. Some of my older programs won't even install. My wife has a 1215N also and hers is running Win 7 32 bit. We have a Windows Home Server that takes complete backups of network-attached computers nightly. The backups are of the nature that if the hard drive in your computer died you could buy a new one, boot the computer from the Restore CD, and write the image of the old drive onto the new one. So here are a few questions.

First, would it be legal for me to restore a backup of my wife's 1215N onto mine? We have both bought and paid for copies of Win 7 Home Premium, it's just that one is 32 bit and the other is 64 bit.

Next, would there be issues that could cause this operation to yield unsatisfactory results, such as driver problems?

Last, any gotchas you can think of?

The drives do not need to be the same size and the one in my 1215N is larger than the one in my wife's computer. Also, if it were a complete mess, I could restore the last backup taken of my computer.

If you restored a backup of your wife's pc's drive onto yours is that technically copying just the content of the drive or the os as well? if it is just the contents then I don't see how that is a legality issue but I could be wrong in my assumption or not have understood your question since you'd still have a win 7 64 bit but you would restore a backup of a drive from a win7 32 bit onto yours and I don't know if that is even possible. good luck.

As long as I kept the backup image of my 64 bit computer, it could be restored at some point in the future. I guess from a legal point of view I would hold licenses for 1 32 bit Win 7 and 1 64 bit Win 7, but would be running 32 bit Win 7 on 2 computers and not running 64 bit on any. The legal thing seems to be a bit murky.

I don't believe the hardware is any different, other than my hard drive being larger. It is possible that we have different wireless ethernet adapters, and I know that mine has bluetooth and I don't believe my wife's does. Certainly the processors and memory are the same.

I just checked the Device Manager on both computers. My wife's says the computer is an ACPI x86-based PC. Mine say ACPI x64-based PC. That would seem to tell me that there is a difference and I should leave well enough alone.