I am trying to go from 32 bit Vista to 64 bit Windows 7. The 32 bit Vista was installed by mistake. My system can handle a 64 bit OS. Now I have finally found the time to upgrade. But the 64 bit intallation DVD can't be read from my OS. Any Advice? Do I need to boot from that DVD drive? Will that work?
Can it read the disk and not execute the 64 bit files, or can it just not read the disk? I'd just try and see if you can boot from it if you can, you'll want to back anything you want to keep up and delete the partition so you don't have 2 versions of windows on your disk.
32-bit OS, can't read 64-bit files. Windows 7 64-bit disk is well in 64-bit... so the auto-run won't run. To do a clean install, you need to boot from your Windows 7 disk, to allow you to format your partition with Vista, and install Windows 7 64-bit on their. See your motherboard instruction manual to know how to change the boot order, or access a boot device menu selection screen, if any. BEFORE you install Windows 7, I highly suggest the following: -> In your BIOS, if you have an option somewhere called "HPET" , set it to 64-bit mode. -> Set your SATA controller to AHCI and not IDE (or could be called Legacy or Compatibility). This should have been already set, to get the most performance out of your HDD and provide TRIM support (Win7 and later, only) for SSD's (as well as eSATA support and hot swappable drive support (so that you can cause your eSATA port like a USB port, in the sense that you can pull or turn off your drive without turning off the system). This option needs to be set before Windows is installed. Else you'll need to do some registry hacking, to have Windows load the SATA drivers.
It is as if the CMOS cuts off my keyboard. When I try to boot from the DVD that has Windows 7 64 bit on it it seems to ask me to confirm. Since my keyboard is sometimes inactive during the boot process, I cannot confirm, and the old VISTA OS is boot up. I think this is the heart of the problem I am having now. Any suggestions?
USB keyboard? If you have an old ps2 keyboard knocking about try that, also my mouse wasn't useable in the efi/bios in one of my usb ports so I tried another and now it works everytime, makes me think that maybe not all of the usb ports are powered up during boot but that's just a guess.
