Hi all ! I am a newbie to all these windows installation & all, so As the title says, i m a bit confused regarding installing a 64 bit version as i m presently running a Win -7 prof. 32-bit. I have a Core 2 duo E7400(2.8 Ghz), 500 GB HDD, 4Gb Ram(2Gb installed+getting 2 Gb soon from a friend), nvidia 512mb graphics. Now my main confusion is that i have partitioned my HDD in 5 drives with C drive being the primary/boot drive and rest of all containing movies, games & other data. SO i wanted to know if i try to install a 64 bit of Windows with a bootable disc will it install directly i.e. compressing old files into windows old folder or will it refuse to install saying u have a incompatible version installed. At most of places i have read that u will need to format the partition for installing a 64 bit versions, so is it possible to format only C drive in which i have my current OS installation while installing 64 bit using the option to load driver & which is i guess used when partitioning a new HDD. My only fear is i don't want to loose all my approx. 350 Gb in other logical partition. Any suggestion/clarification of my doubts will be really appreciated ! thanx !
High you need to install an additional 2GB memory for a total of 4GB before you'll be able to install x64 w/out getting an incompatible version installed error. As for the rest no worry your other partitions will not be affected. Go to the blue link below "The Official Windows 7 Repository" it's a good read with many howto tips for n00bs & power users alike.
Wha? I have 2GB on my netbook and it is running 64-bit - you don't NEED to have 4GB ram. As long as the processor and hardware supports 64 bits, then you'll be fine.
You can't "upgrade" directly to the 64bit release, so here are your options: 1. Backup your documents and files to an external drive, reformat and re-install the 64-bit edition. I believe that "Windows Easy Transfer" can backup from 32bit to 64bit (but not vice-versa). 2. Boot from a Linux distribution (e.g. Ubuntu), mount your Windows drive, create a new folder (e.g. Win7Backup) at the root of your Windows drive, and move ALL folders there (especially "Users"). Boot the Windows install DVD and do a "Custom" install onto the drive - but DO NOT choose the advanced option to format the drive. When Windows is installed, manually move your user documents/files back to the appropriate places. You can later remove unnecessary folders (Program Files, Windows, etc.). Option 2 is a way to perform a clean install without having to reformat the drive, but it's risky. Don't do this unless you know what you're doing, have an external backup, and keep in mind that user settings and installed programs will not be salvageable. Having said that, I always use this method to perform a "clean" install, without having to do a full backup to an external drive.
thanx ! i will be installing another 2 Gb Ram in a day or two . Actually i too want to install windows from scratch i.e. don't want any of the existing programs installed ..... will be reinstalling them as at present i have installed too many softwares & windows has become too buggy. So i guess it would be fine if i install the 64-bit window from boot disc & replace the current installation & programs & that won't affect my movies, documents etc. in D,E,F drives.
Yep, so go ahead and do it! . My second option will give you the same result as a clean install, but without the need for external backup. However, you should always be safe rather than sorry. Once you've added that extra 2G RAM, you'll be wasting almost 1GB on the 32bit edition (due to driver memory allocations, etc)... so it's worth upgrading.
The above is not true at all. You can install 64-bit Windows 7 on a machine with only 1gb of RAM, or even less. It is just that if you have more than 3.25 (in most cases) available to you, 64-bit Windows can utilize the extra RAM, whereas 32-bit Windows is capped at using 3 or 3.25gb of RAM and cannot utilize more. But you can still install 64-bit Windows on a machine with less than 4gb of RAM, it has nothing to do with that.
Yep, that's true. I've installed the 64bit edition on a 2gb machine with no problems. What's generally agreed upon is that 64bit Windows is a little slower than 32bit, when you've got just 2gb of RAM. This is because 64bit binaries occupy more RAM. However, once you go beyond 3GB or so, the benefits of 64bit become apparent.