32Bit -> 64Bit

Kind of weird. I was fixing a laptop for a customer. He had a destroyed hard drive. I managed to partclone it to a ssd. However, I noticed, it's a Core i5, yet Dell shipped it with 32bit. I don't know how or why, but that's neither here nor there.

Is there an easy way to upgrade from 32 to 64 that anyone knows of?

 

Thought so. Damn, I was hoping someone would have a trick.

Partclone failed because of how many bjorked sectors the hdd had, so I had to re-install anyway. Thanks David!

 

David's info is all good-D
Another reason it maybe 32bit is choice at setup.
I just bought an Asus laptop and a Toshiba laptop and the Asus allowed you to have either 32bit or 64bit in Windows 8. On the other hand the Toshiba satellite had the options of win 8 64/32bit or downgrade to win7 32/64bit. Once you choose the OS the recovery disk is generated to match and you can't change it again ...... supposedly rolleyes
If you haven't activated windows yet you can still install another version after deleting both of the partitions and reformatting the HDD LOL
NOTE for this to work you need to have the manufacturer's setup disk and not have the windows install image on the other partition of the HDD

If you don't have a manufacturer's disk and you have another pc handy then just make an image of the new laptop's HDD (I use ghost coz I am an old fart but Acronis or similar works fine) before you install the OS on the laptop for the first time and then if you make the wrong choice you can still go back to the original choices offered

I discovered this the hard way when I installed Win 8 64bit (my choice) instead of Win 7 32bit (his choice) for somebody DOH! rolleyes

@Zack this post is probably no great help in your case but may explain why 32bit is installed and may be helpful for the future

 

All good info

It came at a good time- his hard drive died. So I just gave him a nice new fast SSD and installed x64 7 for him.

 

I need/want to upgrade win7 32bit to 64bit principally because I have run out of memory.

My C drive is an SSD but it doesn't seem a good idea to delete everything on it just to do a fresh install. Is deleting really necessary with an SSD main drive?

I still have the original HDD from which the SSD was cloned, so maybe one way of upgrading would be to put the HDD back, format it and do the 64bit install on that, then clone it onto the SSD but it seems a bit of a faff do do it that way unless it's really necessary.

The motherboard is 64bit compatible but only has 2 slots for DIMM, so I've bought 2 off 4GB DIMMs ready for the upgrade.

Any guidance on the best way to proceed?

Thanks.