Also, make sure your hardware has the appropriate drivers available, especially moving to 64-bit as there may be specific 64-bit drivers to download. Reinstalling to different hardware or another computer using this guide will deactivate Windows and you will need to reactivate manually from your COA sticker. For example, if you are using Home Premium you need to reinstall Home Premium. Firstly, you cannot reinstall a different edition of Windows to what you currently have installed. There are a couple of things you need to know about switching Windows versions between 32-bit and 64-bit. Go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools to open Windows Easy Transfer and follow the instructions to create a backup. Also the Windows Easy Transfer tool can backup documents, emails, media files and favorites for quick restoration. An easy way is to create a full Windows 7 image backup so that you can restore it in case anything goes wrong.Īlternatively there are plenty of quality alternatives such as Macrium Reflect.

Before starting anything, it’s a good idea to backup all important data. There are valid reasons for you to want to upgrade your 32bit Windows 7 to 64-bit, and also downgrade from 64-bit down to 32-bit, it’s mostly about how you want to use your computer.Ĭonverting from one version to another is not difficult but it’s also not quite as simple as popping in your Windows DVD and pressing a button because you will need to reinstall all your software etc. A 64-bit Windows can use all the memory your computer has installed and also specific applications can further increase their speed under 64-bit via optimizations. There are third party hacks to force a 32-bit version of Windows to utilize more memory, but they are tricky to use and not completely reliable.ģ2-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows each have plus and minus points, 32-bit is better on memory usage, is less picky about unsigned drivers and also has better compatibility with older and certain types of software such as some security applications. By default, no version of Windows can make use of more than about 3GB of RAM unless it is the 64-bit edition of the operating system. In the last few years, most computers have come preinstalled with at least 4GB of memory and one change that has to be made with that amount of RAM is you need to be running the right version of Windows to take advantage of it.

Can i change windows to 64 bit