Vista Business 32 to Win 7 64?

[toffa813]

I have a new MBP (sig) and went to my school bookstore to pick up Windows 7 for cheap since I'll need it when I start in the fall. They informed me that their Win 7 discs were upgrade discs and that I'd have to buy Vista first, and so I did. It is Vista Business and when I looked at my computer information found out that it is 32bit. I have both the 32 and 64 bit versions of 7 (giving the other to my brother) and when I popped in the Windows 7 64 bit it told me the installation disc wasn't compatible with my current version of Windows.

So is there a way around to this? Both me and my brother (who has a Toshiba, not a Mac, although I don't think it matters) now have 32 bit versions of Vista and I would like to have the 64 bit version. And ultimately the 32 bit version would work right? I'd hate to leave the 64 bit version gathering dust.

[Winni]

You can obtain the 64-Bit discs for Vista directly from Microsoft for a low fee (around 20 Euros/USD). I've blogged about it last year when I went through that procedure myself:

http://www.wmaus.net/wordpress/?p=508

Disclaimer: I live in Europe and don't know if and how this might actually work in the US.

On another note, you do NOT want to upgrade your Windows installation. ALWAYS make a fresh installation - and this is true for both Windows and Mac OS X. Update/upgrade installations are never optimal and carry a lot of garbage around with them that cause instabilities, slow performance or simply weird behavior. Format that partition and make a clean install.

[toffa813]

It will work in the US, but it's not working, and I think it might be because I have a school edition and it's got weird licensing stuff associated with it. Thanks for the info though, I'll try to find my brother's product key and try that.

[balamw]

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Microsoft doesn't support 32-> 64 bit upgrades even though they can be done via registry hack. Don't bother. Install clean as Winni suggests.

Note that you can install fine from windows 7 upgrade media on "bare metal" I'm on my iPhone so it's harder to pull up the link but google thurott windows clean upgrade.

As long as you are satisfied you are in license compliance just install from the w7 upgrade disc clean and reinstall all your apps.



B

[toffa813]

When I restart, I can boot from both my Macintosh HD as well as my Windows Boot Camp partition, as well as the Windows 7 disc that's in my Superdrive. If I boot from the disc and it allows me to go through that process (which I just read works for some people, I don't know about Macs) will it then erase my Macintosh partition?

I guess that wouldn't be such a big deal anyway since I use time machine and have the original install disks that came with my MBP. (Or would there be an issue there too?)

[toffa813]

Update: I decided to try to boot from the disk and it worked perfectly, I just selected I wanted it install on my partition. Great success!

Now if I could only get Windows to play nice with my airport.. (suggestions? I tried airport utility)