david said:
I have a HPpavilion PC a1730n it has a 32 bit operating system. It also
is
64 bit capable. It came with Windows Vista Home Premium. How do I upgrade
to
a 64 bit os?
Hi David,
If your HP Pavillion came with Vista pre-installed, you have an "OEM
Licence" copy of Vista. If you want to swap your current 32-bit OEM licence
to a 64 bit Vista, you'll need to contact HP and see if they provide that
option ... it's pretty much up to HP.
There is a so-called Anytime Upgrade facility, which let's you upgrade from
Home Premium to Vista Ultimate. However, you can't do an Anytime Upgrade
from 32-bit to 64-bit (in case anyone else suggests this). So, Anytime
Upgrade is not an option, here.
The other way to get 64 bit Vista would be to walk into any shop, and buy a
copy of 64 bit Vista over the counter. Take it home and install it on your
HP machine. No problem.
In either case, you can't actually do an in-place upgrade from 32-bits to 64
bits Windows. You would need to back up your user data, then wipe the hard
disk; then install 64 bit Windows Vista from scratch; then re-install your
applications, and then restore your user data (documents, database files,
etc).
Opinion is divided about whther 64 bit Windows is worth the effort or not.
For most applications, there's no performance advantage - 64-bit Vista does
not run any faster than 32 bit Windows. The main advantage to 64-bits is if
you have applications which need to address large amounts of memory (more
than 2GB user mode; ie, useful if if your machine has more than 4GB RAM).
Typically these are heavy-duty database applications, or high-end
scientific, multimedia and image processing applications. Normal office
apps, web browsing, music and photo apps etc do not get much - or any -
benefit from running on 64 bit Windows. 64 bit Windows cannot run any 16 bit
applications, such as DOS or Windows 3.x apps, either (including 16
bit-installers for 32-bit applications). Also, it can be difficult to find
64 bit device drivers, although this is getting steadily better with time.
So whether it is worth going 64 bits really depends on what you want to do
with it.
Hope this helps,
