Apples and oranges, upgrade current system or upgrade DVD. There is nothing wrong with ordering a 64 bit upgrade version of the DVD instead of the 32 bit. I would be willing to bet, if they had ordered the actual DVD, which they could have done, it would have booted and worked fine.
It's not the same installation files, that's why you can't use the upgrade-in-place method.
One of the differences between a 32 bit and 64 bit is that a 32 bit system has 4gb of space for addressing which means that the 32 bit system has a limit of 4GB RAM to process data where as the 64 bit operating system has 2^64 bits of space to address and can support 16 million terrabyte of RAM to process data.
Going from 32 bit to 64 bit is not an upgrade. Going from Vista Home Premium or Windows 7 Ultimate is. When I ordered a 64 bit version of Vista since it only came with a 32 bit version, they only charged me $10 for the DVD, not the full price of an upgrade.
Well, 32 bit is less efficient at a lot of stuff, and 64 bit is better.
It's a "Legal" upgrade, but it won't "Run" from the installer.
The problem is on windows part for not building a clean method of upgrading.
That aside, the download comes in a set of 3 peices, and is just a folder of the install.
I was going from vista x32 to windows 7 pro x64, pain in the arse.
The download itself won't extract on a 32 bit system that I know of, so I had to copy the files to a spare machine running xp 64, which miraculously not only could extract but offered a direct upgrade via the installer.
Wrong system, but anyways the custom install instructions require an ISO or bootable, so i ended up having to download Windows AIK (Automated Installation kit), which was another 2 gigabytes, installed that, ran a command line that turned the files into an ISO (seriously google is awsome), then I used the microsoft utility to put the ISO onto a bootable Flash Disk (USB).
Did the install, low and behold when through but wouldn't accept the upgrade key.
Called microsoft tech support, they had this to say:
HK_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/WINDOWS/SETUP/OOBE
I changed the value of MediaBootInstall to 0 (It was set to 1)
Then I had to run the command prompt AS ADMINISTRATOR (very important):
cd \windows\system32
cscript.exe simgr.vbs -rearm
After running those 2 lines, I rebooted. I was able to register my product key no problems.
Not sure if this helps anyone else, but yeah, that downloadable distribution blew.
**EDIT** - With those changes, I'd imagine it opens a number of possibilities with downloadable ISO's or using a friends disk. Good luck to ya.
***EDIT*** - It appears someone already posted the instructions to make a bootable here: Make bootable iso from student d/l
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