How to reinstall windows 7 if I have win7 x32 installed and I want to replace it with win7 x64?(I don't want to format my hard drive)
2 Answers
Please refer to Microsoft's Windows 7 install and upgrade FAQs for your information.
You cannot upgrade architectures without performing a "clean" install of Windows. This is due to most of the 32-Bit and 64-Bit system files being incompatible across versions.
Ref: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/32-bit-and-64-bit-windows
What you are trying to do will not work unless you do the following:
Partition your existing hard disk so you can dual-boot one or the other versions - thus keeping your personal files on one partition which you could migrate to your 64-Bit partition and then extend the partition to cover your whole disk. You will need to make sure you have enough space to fit the second OS + duplicate your data files.
The same as above but install Win 7 64-Bit on a second hard disk as a dual-boot.
- First you want to make sure that you're DVD drive is selected as the first boot device in your BIOS.
- Boot from your Win 7 DVD.
- Once loaded, select install.
- After its extracted the initial setup files, you'll be given a screen showing all your drives.
- Select the current drive that Windows is installed on.
- It should prompt you saying that it will install a new version of Windows and create an "Old Windows" folder; containing your old installation of Windows.
- Continue with the install and once its finished, if you so chose, you can delete the "Old Windows" folder once you've booted back into your new version of Windows.
Can I ask though, why don't you want to format your drive?
-
Also to add that you cannot "upgrade" architectures without formatting. A change in OS architecture (32-Bit to 64-Bit and vice versa) requires a clean install. A possible solution would be to dual-boot. This will require the OP to partition their disk to fit both OSes on. Jul 22, 2014 at 6:27
-
@BigChris Sure you can. You don’t have to format you drive to reinstall Windows, but it’ll be a real mess afterwards.– Daniel BJul 22, 2014 at 12:06