upgrade to vista 64 bits

  • Thread starter Thread starter lap
  • Start date Start date
Not in the normal sense, you need to perform a clean install and a reinstall
of all your applications and restoration of backed up data.
 
lap said:
Is it possible to upgrade vista home premium 32 bits to 64 bits
version? thanks.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, no. You have to install the 64-bit version from
scratch.
 
Is it possible to upgrade vista home premium 32 bits to 64 bits
version? thanks.
Click to expand...


No. You can not upgrade *any* version of Windows from its 32-bit
version to its 64-bit version, nor can you downgrade from a 64-bit
version to a 32-bit version. The only way to get from one of those to
the other is by a clean reinstallation.
 
lap said:
Hi,

Is it possible to upgrade vista home premium 32 bits to 64 bits
version? thanks.
Click to expand...

If you are asking if you can use a retail upgrade version to
upgrade from 32 bit to 64 bit Vista, the answer is, yes. But,
you cannot do an in place upgrade on top of the 32 bit
Vista. It can only be done as a clean install.

You have two choices. You can do a reformat during the
installation, which wipes everything in the partition. If you
chose not to reformat, your 32 bit Vista installation will be
saved into a windows old folder. The value of this is, if
the 64 bit installation doesn't work out, you can revert to
the 32 bit installation. Also, any files that are not in the
32 bit Vista folders, such as folders you created, will not
be touched by the 64 bit install. The old 32 bit folder can
be deleted if no longer needed.

If you're going to use an OEM 64 bit Vista version, a clean
install is your only option, but you could install it into a
different partition or drive as a dual boot.
 
Thanks for this. I read somewhere that vista 32 bit do not manage more
than 3.2 G of RAM. Do you think it's true? I just got a computer from
Dell with vista home premium 32 bit with 4G before I read it. If it
turns out to be true then 0.8G is worth nothing!?? what do you think?
That's not even mentionned on the website!!!
 
Do we think it's true? No, we know it's true, it's been like this for many
years, it's not a new issue with Vista.
 
Thanks for this. I read somewhere that vista 32 bit do not manage more
than 3.2 G of RAM. Do you think it's true? I just got a computer from
Dell with vista home premium 32 bit with 4G before I read it. If it
turns out to be true then 0.8G is worth nothing!?? what do you think?
That's not even mentionned on the website!!!
Click to expand...


It's not exactly true, but it's pretty close. Here's the scoop on the
issue:

All 32-bit client versions of Windows (not just Vista/XP) have a 4GB
address space. That's the theoretical upper limit beyond which you can
not go.

But you can't use the entire 4GB of address space. Even though you
have a 4GB address space, you can only use *around* 3.1GB of RAM.
That's because some of that space is used by hardware and is not
available to the operating system and applications. The amount you can
use varies, depending on what hardware you have installed, but can
range from as little as 2GB to as much as 3.5GB. It's usually around
3.1GB.

Note that the hardware is using the address *space*, not the actual
RAM itself. The rest of the RAM goes unused because there is no
address space to map it too.
 
All 32-bit systems have this problem. They have a 32-bit (4GB) address
space, but some of that must be used for BIOS, video RAM, etc. What's
left over is used to access system RAM. See
http://members.cox.net/slatteryt/RAM.html
Click to expand...


The reason for this is hard-coded in the math used in 32bit OSes.

A limit of 32bit OSes is the fact that the highest number which can be
used in 32bit memory operations is about 4GB and change (approximately
[4x1024x1,000,000], or ~4,096,000,000).

This is what Tim refers to as "address space".
~4GB is the highest integer number which can be displayed and operated
on in binary numbers, the number system of computers, using 32bit
arithmetic.

Donald L McDaniel
 
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