Switch 32bit to 64bit with new hard drive

[scotth501]

Hi,

Sorry for this being long, I'm hoping someone will spot the user error or bad process I'm using.

I was hoping someone might have a suggestion for me. I have a new hard drive and thought it would be a good chance to jump from Vista Home Premium 32bit to the same version 64bit. I added the drive, changed the boot order in BIOS and that was about the only thing that worked right.

A guy at work provided the 64bit ISO from his MSDN account. Everything I've read says all the versions are on the disk and just the key is what determines. I have the 32bit OEM/systembuilder disk. From what I understand, my licensing is good for the version, not the bit level. With the exception of changing the boot order, I'm running the same hardware, so I don't think there should be a concern there. His disk comes up as version 6001 (SP1 included) after I burned it to a dvd.

Anyway, I boot up the dvd, select the new drive which is already showing as drive 0. It never asks me for my license to pick the proper version, it just installs ultimate. On the first boot, I got a blue screen and it came back in safe mode. On rebooting again, it looked good. I checked my Vista Experience score and had 1.0 because of video drivers. So, I managed to get to the vendor's website and download and install the drivers. On reboot, another blue screen and yet another reboot.

Now things looked somewhat decent (except the blue screen experiences). I wanted to get windows updates to make sure I have the latest patches before installing anything else. I'm pretty sure I need my permanent license know for windows genuine whatever. I plug in my key code and it says it's not valid. I know it thinks it's Ultimate and I'm trying to use a home premium key, so I go online to look to for answers. IE locks and restarts due to some unknown error. It starts doing it on every page to the point that I can't even get my search term typed in before IE crashes. Then explorer crashes and the whole desktop reloads.

So, I figure I missed something on the install and redo the entire installation again. Same basic results, the system is completely unusable & everything causes process failures and restarts.

Is it likely that my source ISO was bad somehow? Is there some other secret install I can do when booting off the DVD to get more options?

My only other idea is to clone my current drive to the new one and then try to do the fresh install when it can detect the current version on the drive. I was really hoping for as clean of an install as possible, but so far it's a complete failure. My concern with this option is related to the poor decision I had made previously with setting up an OS partition and Data partition on the old drive. I absolutely hate that, it's inefficient on the space (since that was a smaller drive) and now my data seems spread around 3 folders while I was figuring out how to move off of C:\user\username, now I have a few things straggling there, some in d:\user\username, and somehow d:\userdata\username.

I had great hopes that I could just install on the blank new drive, use Vista easy transfer to a usb external drive, and have it put things back into a single C:\ drive with all of the folders not spread all over hell.

Thanks for taking the time to read through this mess. I'm sure it's an id-10-t error, but I can't find any explanation for why the system is so unstable.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Well I don't know about the Blue Screen errors without knowing what the message was on the blue screen.

As for the activation you have it partially right. All versions (Home Premium, Ultimate...) are contained on the CD - the key determines which one you use. As you also know, 64 bit is not contained on that CD, but is available to you for free via the 64bit upgrade pack. The problem you are running into seems to be the Release Version. Vista SP1 discs/keys are not compatible with Vista discs/keys. You would have to find a 64bit version that does not contain SP1 in order to install it.

-Kevin

 

[scotth501]

Thanks, I'll see if I can locate one. I was concerned about trying that since I found some results in my searching that seemed to indicate having multiple sticks of RAM when installing Vista 64bit was an issue prior to SP1. I have 4x 1GB DDR2-800.

 

[amddude]

Yeah try one stick, btw have these sticks passed memtest86?

 

[Scotteq]

Might be a good idea to run the Upgrade Advisor, and see if it finds an issue: http://www.microsoft.com/windo...t/upgrade-advisor.aspx

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
Vista SP1 discs/keys are not compatible with Vista discs/keys.

That's the first that I've heard of that. Can you supply a link backing that up?

 

[Dahak]

First I have heard of that. At work when I do re-install of Vista on machines like Toshiba, HP, Lenovo, etc that all have the vista key on the bottom, i use a vista sp1 install disk and it works fine never had any issues

 

[SolMiester]

OP, you didnt say if you used SATA drivers or installed the motherboard chipset drivers before your video drivers or anything else....try the install with just 2GB of RAM, after install install the rest!

 

[n7]

Memtest86+!

It very much sounds like bad RAM.

Assuming all the RAM actually does test fine, then try installing with just one DIMM installed, not all four.

Something is funny though.

You said it did not ask you for the version...something's wrong there.
It should ask you for the key, & if you do not supply the key, it should ask you to choose the version.

It's it not, it's not a clean install; it's been modified somehow...perhaps it's an OEM prebuilt's disc, or perhaps isn't legit at all.
Either way, something is not right.

 

[scotth501]

Thanks! I'll give it a try this weekend when I can take the RAM back out, but it looks like it's actually an issue with the disk image:

MSDN Forum discussion

"you are not going to like this. Is this the image you installed from MSDN?

en_windows_vista_ultimate_with_service_pack_1_checked_build_x64_dvd_71940.iso

That is the Vista Ultimate x64 checked/debug image. According to Microsoft tech support today (3rd escalation in 4 days), that is a special build and should not be used for application development (thanks MS for putting it on MSDN and confusing the *** out of us). More for kernel drivers and such. There is no Windows update for that version and that is why I was getting no updates and manual installs were failing. I was also get c++ runtime errors (Assert Failed) and just wierd things randomly happening. "

Thanks for the ideas. I haven't run memtest on all 4 sticks, just the first two g.skill 2x1GB pair. I've been running the whole lot of them for months without issues, so I didn't think about going back and testing like I did when the build was new.

Thanks again,
Scott