Moving from Windows Vista 32 bit to Windows 7 64 bit on same computer

[philg]

I already have my Lightroom catalog and photo files on a second hard drive, not my primary one. After wiping out the Windows Vista OS and installing Windows 7 and Lightroom, can I simply point to the catalog on the secondary drive when Lightroom loads the first time after the new OS is loaded?  While I plan to back up everything, I was trying to avoid the catalog export and move back.

Also, it appears I simply need to reenter my key after launching Lightroom the first time. I presume I can still later load Lightroom on my laptop, which I haven't done yet because I haven't traveled on any photo trips yet.  Is this true?

[Steve Weldon]

"can I simply point to the catalog on the secondary drive when Lightroom loads the first time after the new OS is loaded? "

Yes but..

Your Lightroom configuration file, templates, and so forth.. are located in your users/user/appdata/roaming/adobe/lightroom/ folder.. so any templates, config files, presets, actions, etc,e tc.. should be saved separately and then moved back afterwards.

[Alan Goldhammer]

IAfter wiping out the Windows Vista OS and installing Windows 7 and Lightroom, can I simply point to the catalog on the secondary drive when Lightroom loads the first time after the new OS is loaded?  While I plan to back up everything, I was trying to avoid the catalog export and move back.

You should not have to do a reformat when you upgrade from Vista to Win 7; only Win XP requires this.  It will save some heartburn if you just do the standard upgrade as all of your LR files will stay on the machine and you won't have to worry about copying them to a second drive prior to the upgrade.  If you do a full disk format and install you will have to do what Steve notes.

[Steve Weldon]

Unfortunately whenever going from x32 to x64 of any version.. it's always a full new installation.

[Alan Goldhammer]

Unfortunately whenever going from x32 to x64 of any version.. it's always a full new installation.

Misread your original post.  When I did it was x32 to x32.

[philg]

If I simply uninstall Lightroom before I install the OS, can I then install Lightroom after the OS install and then reenter my license key without burning a license?

[jtmiller]

Win7 has a great utility which I've successfully used: Windows Easy Transfer. You can download it from the MSFT website and run it before you do the migration which greatly helps with "full installation" issues. Saves all relevant information in the user directories including all the stuff in the less obvious directories.

Nice feature is that it permits mapping of oldusernames to newusernames on restoration. It also brings across permissions so if you want most users to be "normal" you'll need to demote them from admin privileges after migration.

Highly recommended.

good luck

jim

[John.Murray]

yes

If I simply uninstall Lightroom before I install the OS, can I then install Lightroom after the OS install and then reenter my license key without burning a license?

[philg]

Upgraded my computer over labor day weekend with no problems. Thanks to the responses here on Lightroom. Everything related to Lightroom worked as expected.

I realize most people are probably aware of the option to keep the Lightroom preferences in the Lightroom catalog, but I found out this to be a nice feature as I maintain my Lightroom catalog on a separate drive and have it backed up on two others. Makes it easy to do the restore after an upgrade or in the case of a failure.