haldir Posted July 15, 2011 Share Posted July 15, 2011 Hey guys & gals I asked this on Facebook but I thought of asking it here as well. Right now I have a Dell that has Vista 32 bit on it. Now I'm in the process of upgrading. What I'd like to do is get a full version of Windows 7 64 bit & install it on a new hard drive. Can I put that hard drive into the Dell system & take out the hard drive with Vista on it? Copy over all my stuff & such afterwards or do that to the external hard drive & then swap em. I wasn't sure due to it being a Dell & the way things are when you upgrade stuff in regards to the Dell proprietary & such. Also are these full version of Windows 7? Just in OEM format: Windows 7 64 bit Windows 7 32 bit Oh one more thing, I know that some 32 bit stuff isn't compatiable with 64, but what mainly do I have to watch out for? Processor? Memory? Heck even the mobo I have? Kinda wondering if upgrading to 64 is worth the trouble, when I could just upgrade over the existing Vista copy I have & then move things to that new hard drive. Reminds me I need to talk to Hadji or Sanji(ie Dell) first before purchasing my Window 7 copy off of Amazon.com & see if I can upgrade this Vista or not. Last Dell computer I had wouldn't except a upgrade copy of Vista I bought locally. thanks for any help on this one. RM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr.Bedlam Posted July 15, 2011 Share Posted July 15, 2011 A BUNCH of programs aren't compatible with 64; quite a few of my old games, in particular, I now have to run on the laptop... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
orcsoul Posted July 15, 2011 Share Posted July 15, 2011 90% of those older titles can be run in compatibility mode successfully.. In fact I play quite a few 15+ year old titles on my Win7 X64 install just fine. As far as the HDD swap goes, about the hardest thing you'll have to do is get the drivers for some of the potentially exotic hardware you might have on the machine... Get them now, especially the network card driver, drop them on a flash drive and you'll be good to go. As far as the whole 'upgrade' option goes.. don't do it. I've never seen an actual upgrade go smoothly ever since Win 95 first came out. You're best off doing a fresh install on a formatted drive. As far as the hardware goes.. the hardware doesn't care if you're running x86 or x64 bit software except your processor. If your processor doesn't support the x64 architecture (which practically all of them do these days), you'll be up a creek without a paddle. The catch with the 'system builder' edition is it's a single activation key, once you've activated it on your hardware it basically generates the equivalent of a MD5 sum of your hardware, and if it varies too much (IE you change motherboards in the future, even a simple replacement with the same model can cause issues) your install will throw fits, and the 'system builder' edition gives you one free reset of your key by calling into microsoft and explaining to them what happened. (it's a painless process, i've had to do it in the past) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haldir Posted July 15, 2011 Author Share Posted July 15, 2011 Thanks guys Figured there wouldn't be any problems but you never know with Dell + with my last upgrade going up in smoke, wanted to be sure before plunking down 100 bucks for Win 7. Really there isn't anything out of the ordinary in my machine currently so I think I'll be good to go as far as 64 bit compatible. I'm looking at the various websites right now & so far everything is good to go. I may upgrade my video card before I do the Win 7 install thou as it's a early DX 10 release card & I'd like at least a out of awhile DX 10 card. I don't need nothing fancy, about the only thing I game with these days is LOTRo (thou I've seen shots of that one in all it's high glory & wow, what a great looking game) + I do Facebook games. RM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jubilee Posted July 15, 2011 Share Posted July 15, 2011 I agree about avoiding upgrading. When I upgraded my laptop from vista to win7, it disabled my wireless card drivers because it would be incompatible. It also disabled my CD drive drivers. Then it insisted I needed to reboot before it could finish installing. Can you see where this is going? Suddenly, I had no cd drivers with which to read the CD it would need to use to install the software. Also, it had no wireless internet with which to connect to the internet and find files. Took me -forever- to find the last ethernet cable we had lying around - thank god it didn't disable the ethernet card. Anyway, it was a huge pain. I am never getting tricked into buying a laptop with the crappy system on it with a promise of a free upgrade when it comes available). Next time I am waiting to buy a laptop without a crappy system. :P Good luck, Haldir. I have nothing pertinent to add to your needs, but I felt the need to whine where opportunity allowed. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haldir Posted July 15, 2011 Author Share Posted July 15, 2011 Oh no worries. Heck I feel kinda stupid even asking the question since I've built my own system before, multiple times & such. Just don't want to go through the same thing as I did before. Heck, even Hadji (not kidding this time, the Dell rep's name was that, ha ha) Didn't understand why that Walmart bought Vista upgrade wouldn't upgrade my Dell Windows XP machine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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