going 32 bit to 64 bit

Thanks for the tuts and all the goiod advice. I'm downstairs on the notebook; so far so good.

I unplugged the 3 data drives; booted to diskpart. Ran list disks frm command prompt. Disk 0 showed and the others as no media. I am running clean all now. We'll see how long it takes. I've heard 2 to 5 hours. I'm waiting for UPS to deliver a set of MTB tires anyway and I can kill time sitting on the trainer and spinning.

I'm all good here. Everything up and running. It did take me until after 3 AM to have everything back to normal and set how I like, programs installed, data where I like it etc etc.

Now just to install the new memory when it comes.

Had one glitch. I though I had "cleaned all" the drive I had the 32 bit OS on. LOL. Not--I am glad I picked a drive that contained absolutely nothing. Next time I better not guess at the drives I plug and the one I leave plugged in. I discovered when I plugged my other drives back in and the computer booted and up came old version of windows with all my original settings and data ..lol. Anyway I just completely unplugged that drive, rebooted to the one I installed 64 bit on, did my software installs etc and all's good. I guess I don't know the ins and outs completely of diskmgmt and list drives----OR it's probably totally my error for leaving wrong drive plugged in. I will have to read more the next time I undertake an operation like this.

All in all good process though and I thank all who commented. I can do research but if someone wants to tell me how to plug that old system drive back in and "erase" it without it messing things up....appreciate.

Well done

I'd run Diskpart Clean All command on the old HD from your new Win7 installation Elevated Command Prompt to avoid cleaning the wrong drive again. Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command. You could also delete and repartition in Disk Mgmt.

In the future, unplug all other HD's except the one being cleaned or installed upon. This also avoid problems with boot files being derailed when the installer writes them to the first Active partition.

If you want to post back a screenshot of your maximized full Disk Mgmt drive map with listings, using Snipping Tool in Start Menu, we can look it over for you.

Thx Greg. I'm in no hurry though. I need a break now haha. I am waiting for the initial backup to finish that I started a few hours ago, then I still need to install the myriad of updates.

I thnk I should be ok as long as when I plug that drive back in I stop at boot screen on power on and make sure the right drive boots the computer. Then should just be able to clean it.

When I feel like I need to use that drive for something and if I run into a problem i'll post then.

I think this thread can be marked closed.