Windows 7 forum: Switch from vista 32bit to windows7 64bit?

Since you have another HD, you've nothing to lose by trying. As Bob said, update the BIOS if you can and collect all drivers first. I don't know what issue of Win7 you have or plan to use but you'd be well off to purchase a full retail version and not some OEM or upgrade copy. You'll want to test the new installation thoroughly before activating it as well. Remember that an OEM issue locks the OS to the first hardware on which its installed so you can't back out and reuse it on another system once activated.

You cannot do an upgrade from Vista 32-bit to 7 64-bit. You have to back up all of your data and boot off of the Windows 7 (64-bit) DVD and do a clean install.

And Bob has a good point, you need to make sure that the hardware is compatible with the drivers provided by the manufacturer. Generally Vista x64 drivers do work on Windows 7, but every case is different. Note that x86 (32-bit) drivers will not work on a 64-bit system.

-Chris

First off I checked out the ACER Specs http://support.acer.com/acerpanam/notebook/0000/Acer/Aspire6920/Aspire6920sp2.shtml It says it will work on 64 bit but will still only do a max of 4 MB of ram. The ram limit is the result of 32 bit addressing plus how a MB is built with the on board chipset. That means you still only get 4 MB max ram. Next research all your programs first plus each of the devices you mentioned by going to the manufacturer web site. You need to verify that all of them have 64 bit drivers available.

As an example I have one desktop that has SATA Hard Drives and my BIOS allows me to switch which is my boot device. I have 3 different hard drives with WIN XP on one , WIN 7 on another and UBUNTU 11 on another. I have a SCSI card to support several film scanners and printers that I use. The SCSI card works great in WIN XP , UBUNTU and WIN 7 32 bit but is unsupported in WIN 7 64 bit. That limited my ram to 4 MB rather than the 32 I could have put in but it saved me several hundred dollars to get a compatible SCSI card to do the same work of the card that will work with WIN 7 32 bit. I also found out that my printer that works fine in WIN XP and UBUNTU does not have drivers available in WIN 7. I found out the manufacturer of my film scanner did not write a version of their processing software to work with WIN 7 but they did recommend a software that I will purchase but I know will work. Research on my specific printer and WIN 7 found I could use a different model number and get it to function. Do your research first on anything and everything that you currently use.