Upgrading from Vista 32-bit to Win7 64-bit

[nemophoto]

I'm considering upgrading my Vista 32 system to Windows 7 64-bit. No, not a clean install. I did that with my Vista two years ago -- it took two months to get everything re-installed and working properly. Laplink produces a great utility that supposedly transfers setting, data, programs, appropriate drivers, etc. between two computers, including on e that is 32-bit and the other 64-bit. (I'm considering building a new barebones system.)

Has anyone made this leap, 32-bit to 64-bit, and what problems did you encounter? What did Photoshop require to work on 64-bit, and am i correct that most of the plug-ins won't run in 64-bit, so you actually have to run 32-bit Photoshop anyway? Other than memory issues, which I really would like to increase from 4GB (3 used) to 8GB, I'm not 100% sold on the switch.

Thanks for the input.

Nemo

[Pete_G]

I did it on my Thinkpad T61p with the RC version, I thought, "Well, 64 bit is here, might as well jump in". I haven't really suffered that much, to my knowledge. I don't buy the idea of doing anything but a clean install though, no matter how painful reinstalling all the apps is.

To be honest, I see no real, obvious, day to day differences between 32 and 64 - (I'm not a speed freak) although I might if I wanted to address 16Gb of RAM. I ignored Vista and went straight to W7, although I STILL have XP on it's original partition. I don,t have lots of PS plugins, there may be a problem here, you'd have to check with each plugin supplier.


So my advice would be:

Do it
Do a clean install

if you're still nervy:

Install W7 32 bit.
Keep your existing OS, install W7 to another partition.

W7 isn't perfect, but it's better than any Vista setup I've seen.

[Rhossydd]

I've just moved from XP 32 to W7 64 and it's been fairly painless.
The main issue is that some older hardware and software isn't supported, but I knew that would be an issue so have kept the old system drive to swap in to allow me to run XP32 as and when necessary, but those items can be used from my XP laptops anyway.
Other than that it's all running very smoothly and very fast. Definitely better than XP32.

A clean install is the only sensible way to move to 64bit from any 32bit system.

I can't understand why it would take you two months to install your applications and configure them. It took me 14 minutes for the OS install onto a clean unformatted drive, then a few hours to do clean installs of all my applications, so everything was ready to go the same day. Configuration usually adds only a few minutes to the first use of any program. Just do your homework first and ensure that you have all the serial numbers, original disks and any necessary updates etc, before you start.

[John.Murray]

An inplace upgrade from 32 to 64 is not possible.  A clean install is your only option.  Drives are cheap - buy a new one to install Win7 on. Win 7 does have built in migration tools that are excellent.  Have an external drive, or network share handy and run the Transfer tool.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-v...y-transfer.aspx

[nemophoto]

Thanks for the replies. I'm leaning toward a completely new computer rebuild and using Laplink PCMover to transfer programs and settings. According to Laplink, the software has no problems going from 32-bit to a 64bit computer and OS. That way most of the "heavy lifting" is done, and I have the benefit of a clean install. PCMover has received some good reviews, compared to some of the other migration tools on the market. I have to do something soon. Lately I've had one or two crashes and BSOD on a daily basis! I've finally tracked it down to a buggy graphics card driver and/or hardware incompatibility. I actually liked Vista initially. But, numerous patches later, I yell at my computer as much as when I had XP. It's not just Vista with problems. My wife has numerous problems to sort through everytime Apple brings out a new flavor of OS X.