Upgrade Vista Business 32-bit to Ultimate 64-bit

[kpm547]

I have Vista Business 32-bit and I would like to get Vista Ultimate 64-bit.

Can I upgrade to the 64-bit using Vista Anytime Upgrade?

Or can I purchase the retail upgrade of Vista Ultimate 64-bit (even if I have to do a clean install with it)?

Or do I have to purchase the full retail copy of Vista Ultimate 64-bit?

[Sterling_Aug]

I have never tried upgrading from a 32 but to a 64 bit OS as an upgrade.

I always just did a clean full install.

You will need to reinstall all of your apps as well.

[Midknyte]

The full retail boxes come with both 32 and 64bit versions of the OS. I believe the upgrades will only have one version. If anything, you may need to do a clean install.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932795

The big question would be why are you going to 64-bit in the first place?

[kpm547]

I was thinking of going to the 64-bit because of some gaming issues that have a memory allocation issue. My 7950GT crashes while playing Company of Heroes and from what I have been able to determine from the COH forum, it is a problem with 32-bit Vista having a memory allocation issue that doesn't dump the memory and then crashes when it is filled up. Apparently the 64-bit has better memory allocation and doesn't have as big a problem, although it is still there. But that can be solved by adding more ram.

Are there reasons that I should not go with the 64-bit? What's the most recommended ram with 32-bit. I know that you can't go over 4GB, but I've heard that over 3GB is not recommended. Is that true?

[Midknyte]

There are some patches for vista and the gaming.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938979

32bit OSes can only see 4GB total, including your page file. 32 bit applications won't use more than 2GB max anyway. Unless you are running 64bit apps, it's kind of pointless to go to 64bit OS.

[kpm547]

There are some patches for vista and the gaming.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938979

32bit OSes can only see 4GB total, including your page file. 32 bit applications won't use more than 2GB max anyway. Unless you are running 64bit apps, it's kind of pointless to go to 64bit OS.

I had already downloaded those hotfixes and installed them. Just doing a little more reading on the subject though and I did not notice that I need to have the latest BETA drivers from Nvidia 163.44 for the 940105 to work properly. I will try that tonight.

So you're saying that there is no point to increase RAM above 2GB? Even if 32-bit programs only use a maximum of 2G, would it now be better to have 3 then more programs could be running at nearer to the capacity? I'm just noticing that I have 2GB and just at idle state in Vista, my memory usage is about 38-41% used. This is the operating system, AV, Sidebar, Messenger, Logitech Setpoint and Keyboard. So this only leaves approximately 1.2GB for any programs to use. Is that enough? Or could adding an additional 1GB of ram help the situation?

[Midknyte]

2GB is the max addressable space per application, not for the whole system. Adding more ram to Vista seems to help all the way up to 3GB. That leaves more ram for the OS. Vista uses up whatever ram is available for stuff like superfetch.