undecided on 32 bit or 64 bit

Golf1.6

Golf1.6

Golf1.6

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My nephews have a really old machine given to them by their school.

It's a intel celeron t3100 @ 1.9ghz dual core

Would this cpu benefit from 64 bit machine, or is it best left at 32bit.

Secondly it has a serial already installed. will the 32bit serial for windows 7 work on a 64 bit disk>
 
currently has 2GB, but will upgrade to 4GB. I understand that windows 10 uses a lot of caching to speed things up so ram is key with windows 10
 
As long as CPU supports it, there's no question always 64bit. Serials work for either.
And when you upgrade to 4gb on 32bit you wouldn't be able to idolise all off it.
 
thanks for the feedback.

i used a windows os license key salvager to work out the key from the license id. unfortunately it looks like it;s some sort of educational license and after erasing the system and reinstalling windows the license key i got would not activate saying its not valid. The sticker does not have a license key written on it, only a product key.

sigh.

well its too late now i suppose so i have to buy a windows 10 license now for a crappy throwaway laptop. thinking of just going ubuntu now.

so far windows is doing really bad on 2gb ram, monitored the performance and it's reporting very high number of page file seek as its topping out the ram.
 
Golf1.6 said:
thanks for the feedback.

i used a windows os license key salvager to work out the key from the license id. unfortunately it looks like it;s some sort of educational license and after erasing the system and reinstalling windows the license key i got would not activate saying its not valid. The sticker does not have a license key written on it, only a product key.

sigh.

well its too late now i suppose so i have to buy a windows 10 license now for a crappy throwaway laptop. thinking of just going ubuntu now.

so far windows is doing really bad on 2gb ram, monitored the performance and it's reporting very high number of page file seek as its topping out the ram.
Click to expand...

Isn't the Product Key on the sticker you have the one you normally type in to activate Windows? There's a chance you might have to use the phone activation, but I would expect it to activate provided you used the right Windows build (i.e. Windows 7 Home or Pro).

EDIT - Could always try a fresh install of Windows 10 using the latest build (use the Microsoft Windows 10 Media Creation Tool to make an ISO/USB) and this should be able to be activated using the Windows 7 product key listed on the PC's sticker. Again, just make sure it's the right version - Pro or Home - to match the sticker.
 
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Golf1.6 said:
i used a windows os license key salvager to work out the key from the license id. unfortunately it looks like it;s some sort of educational license and after erasing the system and reinstalling windows the license key i got would not activate saying its not valid.
Click to expand...

If the system is of a manufactured box type then the product key you found was possibly from the install image used to install the OS as those keys are blocked from being used to activate a new install of the specific OS.
 
If you haven't already it may be worth trying microsoft's automated phone line. There should be an option when activating to do it over the phone (it's an 0800 number).

This has worked for me with OEM editions.
 
Confused Stu said:
Isn't the Product Key on the sticker you have the one you normally type in to activate Windows? There's a chance you might have to use the phone activation, but I would expect it to activate provided you used the right Windows build (i.e. Windows 7 Home or Pro).

EDIT - Could always try a fresh install of Windows 10 using the latest build (use the Microsoft Windows 10 Media Creation Tool to make an ISO/USB) and this should be able to be activated using the Windows 7 product key listed on the PC's sticker. Again, just make sure it's the right version - Pro or Home - to match the sticker.
Click to expand...

I suppose they didnt want the user to use the product key because the sticker did not have a product key. It just has a genuine windows sticker with product ID only. Hence why I used a generator to recover the product key from the registry

How does phone activation work again? Do I disable wifi before activating the key so it forces phone activation mode?
 
called microsoft and they couldn't help. No product key - no help. I told them that the certificate of authenticity does not have a product key it just has some other codes and that I recovered the key from the registry. The MS staff said that is probably some other default key that isn't useful for activation. They suggested I contact retailer. It's an old celeron laptop. I will just stick with ubutu - may work better on ubuntu
 
Unless there are any specific bits of software that don't like 64 that you need to run then always go 64..
 
Personally I'd stick with 32 bit. I tried putting 64bit onto a maximum 4gb machine once and kept getting "Running out of Memory" errors on various applications. Put 32bit on and problems were gone. 64bit just seems to use more system ram and so leaves less for applications in general. Unless you have a particular need for 64bit I wouldn't bother. Or go with a Linux variant like said its likely to be far more sprightly with older hardware. My old laptop even with W7 is a slug going to put Mint on it as soon as I get round to it I only ever use it for browsing/watching the odd vid maybe the odd letter I'm sure one of the OpenOffice variants can handle that.
 
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