Upgrading from Win XP 32bit to Win 7 64bit? Drivers?

[godbless]

Hello,

So I built a new comp and installed Windows XP 32-bit only to find out it wont read my 8GB RAM like a noob. So my friend has a Full install for windows 7 64bit that I believe can also be used as an upgrade. Is it possible to upgrade from XP 32bit to win7 64bit? Do you guys know how? Does that mean I would have to reinstall all of my drivers, software, and games after the upgrade?

 

[JackMDS]

It depends on how you define Upgrade.

Moving from XP x32 to Win7 x64 is like a new install. Most of the drivers are include with the Win 7 DVD. The other (if any) can be downloaded for the respective manufacturer download service.


😎

 

[SimMike2]

You can't "upgrade" an inplace XP install. What it does is move all your old files to a windows.old directory and basically does a clean install. You can only do true upgrades of Vista 32bit (or Windows7 32bit) to Windows 7 32bit. Or Vista 64bit to Windows 7 64bit.

Like someone else says, there are two definitions of "upgrade", one a verb, like I think you are talking about, and one describing a version of Windows, in this case the upgrade version. Just because you can't "upgrade" your XP install and keep all your programs in place without reinstalling, doesn't mean you can't use the "upgrade" version of Windows 7 to install on your computer.

So the gist is the only way to install Windows 7 on an XP machine is basically a pseudo clean install, which means you will have to reinstall all your programs. Keep in mind that installing an upgrade copy of Windows 7 on an existing XP install, basically wipes out the license of the XP copy. So most people do the fake double install trick and simply install the upgrade version of 7 to a freshly formatted disk, thus saving their XP copy for installing on another machine.