Upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit

540media · 7 Dec 2007 at 18:58

excuse my stupidity here but I was wondering if someone could answer this question for me as I confused.

I'm looking at upgrading from xp pro to vista x64 and dont really know the best upgrade path. This upgrade is for my business so really I want to stick to the Retail versions rather than the OEM one.

If I upgrade from xp to vista 32-bit can I then upgrade to the 64-bit from there?
Also how much does it cost to go from 32-bit to 64-bit... I was looking on M$ site and it says something about a nominal fee, but I cant see anywhere how much this fee.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Amidar · 7 Dec 2007 at 19:11

Works out at just under £7.00,are you buying a full retail version of vista or the retail upgrade version?

Hobgoblin · 7 Dec 2007 at 19:17

best upgrade path will be XP 32 bit to Vista 64bit straight out. your'll be wasting money buying 32bit versions of the OS if you intend to go to 64bit straight away.
As long as your processors are 64bit and you know all your needed software will run in 64bit and hardware has good 64bit drivers etc

and please make many many backup's of your business data

valerian · 7 Dec 2007 at 19:21

540media said:
excuse my stupidity here but I was wondering if someone could answer this question for me as I confused.

I'm looking at upgrading from xp pro to vista x64 and dont really know the best upgrade path. This upgrade is for my business so really I want to stick to the Retail versions rather than the OEM one.

If I upgrade from xp to vista 32-bit can I then upgrade to the 64-bit from there?
Also how much does it cost to go from 32-bit to 64-bit... I was looking on M$ site and it says something about a nominal fee, but I cant see anywhere how much this fee.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

in my opinion don't go there

540media · 7 Dec 2007 at 19:26

Amidar said:
Works out at just under £7.00,are you buying a full retail version of vista or the retail upgrade version?

it will be the retail upgrade version

Hobgoblin said:
best upgrade path will be XP 32 bit to Vista 64bit straight out. your'll be wasting money buying 32bit versions of the OS if you intend to go to 64bit straight away.
As long as your processors are 64bit and you know all your needed software will run in 64bit and hardware has good 64bit drivers etc

and please make many many backup's of your business data

I've not seen an retail version upgrade of the 64-bit version tho... I've seen plenty of OEM 64-bit.

And dont worry everything that we've got is backed up a minimum of 3 times anyway

valerian said:
in my opinion don't go there

but we need to break the 4gb limitation of the 32-bit os's... we're looking at 8gb minimum

valerian · 9 Dec 2007 at 10:32

540media said:
it will be the retail upgrade version

I've not seen an retail version upgrade of the 64-bit version tho... I've seen plenty of OEM 64-bit.

And dont worry everything that we've got is backed up a minimum of 3 times anyway

but we need to break the 4gb limitation of the 32-bit os's... we're looking at 8gb minimum

thats the only reason

540media · 9 Dec 2007 at 14:20

yes, as the work that we do is very processors and ram intensive.. we want to crack up the ram big time

Fire Wizard · 9 Dec 2007 at 15:08

Hey 540media, if you purchase Windows Vista Business Retail, then as you already know that you will only get the 32-bit media in the actual box and you will have to get Microsoft to ship you the 64-bit media. More information about this can be found here.

If you install Windows Vista 32-bit, when you receive the 64-bit disc, you wont simply be able to "Upgrade", you will have to do a clean installation.

valerian said:
in my opinion don't go there

Hey valerian, just because you are having problems with Windows Vista doesn’t mean that 540media will also have problems.

What problems are you actually having anyway?

540media · 9 Dec 2007 at 16:12

Fire Wizard said:
Hey 540media, if you purchase Windows Vista Business Retail, then as you already know that you will only get the 32-bit media in the actual box and you will have to get Microsoft to ship you the 64-bit media. More information about this can be found here.

If you install Windows Vista 32-bit, when you receive the 64-bit disc, you wont simply be able to "Upgrade", you will have to do a clean installation.

yeah I know that I wont be able to do an "upgrade". we are going to go and do a clean install on all our systems.

I hate upgrades (hate all the crap that gets left behind).. clean installs is the way to go.

valerian · 11 Dec 2007 at 11:05

Fire Wizard said:
Hey 540media, if you purchase Windows Vista Business Retail, then as you already know that you will only get the 32-bit media in the actual box and you will have to get Microsoft to ship you the 64-bit media. More information about this can be found here.

If you install Windows Vista 32-bit, when you receive the 64-bit disc, you wont simply be able to "Upgrade", you will have to do a clean installation.

Hey valerian, just because you are having problems with Windows Vista doesn’t mean that 540media will also have problems.

What problems are you actually having anyway?

the 64bit version, wont run musicmatch at all, wont run crysis properly, wont run UT3 properly, problems with drivers, little bits of software i want to run it messes up, with crysis and bioshock you have to pull the exe files from the program files to run the games, the benfits of dx10 are overatted, vista takes up more resources, is temperamental, especially with networking, the utilisation of 4gb of ram, is worthless to most people.
and so on.

if it aint broke dont fix it, why have some big computer makers gone back to offering xp as an option?????

Burnsy2023 · 11 Dec 2007 at 11:26

valerian said:
the benfits of dx10 are overatted,

Do you have any basis for that opinion? Developers havn't even touched on the power of DX10 yet, and it could be a little while before they do, but that's not MS' fault.

valerian said:
vista takes up more resources,

And uses them a hell of a lot better then XP ever could.

valerian said:
is temperamental, especially with networking,

Not been tempremental for me, the networking bug got fixed, maybe the problem isn't the OS?

valerian said:
the utilisation of 4gb of ram, is worthless to most people.

I've used all of my 4GB fairly regularly and I knwo many people that do the same, so that a assertion without any basis fact.

Burnsy

valerian · 14 Dec 2007 at 21:53

if its that good why has a patch for vista 64 just come out,,,,, wait for it 760mb.................????????????????

Fire Wizard · 14 Dec 2007 at 22:01

Hey valerian,

valerian said:
wont run crysis properly, wont run UT3 properly

In what way exactly?

valerian said:
with crysis and bioshock you have to pull the exe files from the program files to run the games

I have never had to do that with either of those games.

valerian said:
the utilisation of 4gb of ram, is worthless to most people.

What's that have to do with Windows Vista itself exactly?

valerian said:
if it aint broke dont fix it,

If everyone thought like that, we would never advance in this world.

CliffyG · 14 Dec 2007 at 22:58

If you need a vpn client to run on the machine then don't install 64 bit, the only available IPSEC ones i found are 3rd party ones which only work in certain configurations.

valerian said:
the 64bit version, wont run musicmatch at all, wont run crysis properly, wont run UT3 properly, problems with drivers, little bits of software i want to run it messes up, with crysis and bioshock you have to pull the exe files from the program files to run the games, the benfits of dx10 are overatted, vista takes up more resources, is temperamental, especially with networking, the utilisation of 4gb of ram, is worthless to most people.
and so on.

if it aint broke dont fix it, why have some big computer makers gone back to offering xp as an option?????

He's putting it on a business machine, i hardly think those apps are going to worry him. Crysis runs perfectly on my 64 bit vista btw. DX10 is work in progress at the mo again useless for most businesses. It does use more resources but i've found it far from temperamental in work or home enviroments. Networking is fine too. RAM as has been mentioned is useful to people who use lots of it, funnily enough there are many about.

valerian said:
if its that good why has a patch for vista 64 just come out,,,,, wait for it 760mb.................????????????????

Remember XP being a bit of a shambles till SP1 and only becoming rock solid after SP2? No OS is perfect it's why new patches / releases always come out. Bit of a simplistic attitude towards it really, it has a large patch it must be crap :confused:

.

Scougar · 14 Dec 2007 at 23:05

Well I gotta say that I'm literally only just trying out Vista Ultimate 64 for the first time (haven't used anything with Vista to date). Looks pretty, and seems to flow really nicely. Seems more responsive than xp as well.

Just downloading all the updates now, and see where I go from there and how I get on with drivers etc (not even tried installing graphics drivers yet eek!).

Matthew

valerian · 14 Dec 2007 at 23:58

i think its a load of crap
dx10 - joke

its always next year, when something else comes out blah blah blah
work in progress?
get real

marc2003 · 15 Dec 2007 at 00:14

valerian said:
i think its a load of crap

ok, we understand. it hasn't worked out for you. that doesn't mean to say there aren't millions of others getting along just fine.

valerian · 15 Dec 2007 at 13:37

marc2003 said:
ok, we understand. it hasn't worked out for you. that doesn't mean to say there aren't millions of others getting along just fine.

i am forced into this statement by forum members who continually deride the issues that i say i have with it, i accept that probably the majority have no issue with it, i wish it performed for me the way i hoped it would.
b4 someone says it must be my system, it aint
vista 64 works fine for most things, the things it does'nt i have mentioned previously

the performance hike you would expect it to have over xp with the games i have mentioned has'nt happened despite
a dx10 OS
4gb ddr3
dx10 card
latest drivers

still had to play these games in xp