Solved Advice required for OEM use

[tinmar49]

My friend has an old but reliable laptop which he wants to dump the Vista and get a new hdd to run W7 hp 64. He has already bought an OEM (for use with a new pc) from a reputable source and I have had a close look at the DVD and it looks ok to me. His laptop maxes out at 2 gb of ram which is not much for 64 bit Windows, so if it struggles with W7 64, can he use the product key and one of the downloadable 32 bit ISO's to change to 32 bit? The DVD is Microsoft OEM, not Dell etc.

 

[Bongo]

It will work that way the key does not know if it's 32 or 64 bit.
Look at this tutorial it has the download link to the ISO and how to burn a DVD http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html

Jerry

 

[NoelDP]

The Key will work with both 32 64 bit disks (but only one install). See the tutorials for further details

 

[tinmar49]

When you say " only one install", do you mean that he could reinstall Windows as 32 bit after running 64 bit as long as it was on the same pc?

 

[whs]

You can reinstall with an OEM version - but only on the same PC.

I would not worry about the 2GB limit. Win7 64bit runs fine in 2GBs.

 

[NoelDP]

... it runs fine, but the overhead of 64-bit in 2GB is high, and it means that the system is likely to be paging to HD that much more often, slowing the machine significantly. This may not matter too much if the drive is an SSD, but it will become annoying with an HD.

 

[tinmar49]

Thanks everyone, your expert advice is much appreciated.