32 bit to 64 bit Vista | The Coffeehouse

Duanerrr

Silly question.

Do I need to reformat and start over or is there a way to "upgrade"

magicalclick

I say do nothing until you get a new PC. Why bother to upgrade if they do the exact same thing? But, for your question, I don't know the answer.

Duanerrr

In reply to magicalclick

#Oct 14th @ 1:40 PM

Right now I have 4GB of RAM. I have no problem spending the around $40 to get another 4GB. But with 32 bit that is not really a good investment.

That and I am not planning on building another computer for a while.

Been a builder not a buyer for awhile.

AndyC

In reply to Duanerrr

#Oct 14th @ 1:55 PM

There is no upgrade path from 32 to 64 bit, it's reformat and reinstall time.

Duanerrr

In reply to AndyC

#Oct 14th @ 2:08 PM

I figured as much. Just thought I would check.

Thanks for the insight.

androidi

You should update to 32 bit Win7. If it still seems you need more memory then go for 64 bit. My not-based-on-researched-facts opinion is that Win7 64 underutilizes the memory, or there is some related registry setting broken on mine which was updated from Vista. Task manager seems to support this opinion if I'm reading it right. The cached physical memory sticks to around 1.5 GB with available being 5 GB. So I'm wasting 5 GB of memory here. In Vista I recall the mem cache was higher and apps started much much faster where as on 7 they load from disk more. So while Win7 generally feels faster than Vista for me, the app loading speed has dropped dramatically (because in Vista they were preloaded straight after boot whether you wanted or not, annoying because it was TOO AGGRESSIVE loading. Now it's the opposite in 7. Guess we'll need win8 to get it right. I will do a reinstall soon to see if that fixes this though).