Replacing Vista 32 with Win 7 64 whiel maintaining Dualboot configuration with Ubuntu

I recently received my Dell Vostro 1320. It came preloaded with Vista basic 32-bit, so the first thing I did was install Ubuntu on a new partition.

Now I want to install windows 7, and I would like to install it over Vista so I can keep my dualboot. The only thing is, i want to install Win 7 64 bit so I'm not stuck on 32. I heard that you need to do a clean install from 32 vista to Win7 64, but won't that wipe my boot record or something? Will I have any issues getting on to ubuntu if I format the vista partition then install Win7 there?

Also, I want to make a partition for my files, but it won't let me make my vista partition less then like 65GB, nor let me make more then 4 partitions. Is there any reason at all why I should keep the dell recovery partition if I'm ditching Vista?

Thanks in advance!

 

Re: Replacing Vista 32 with Win 7 64 whiel maintaining Dualboot configuration with Ub

I'm sure it's compatible. I'm running Ubuntu 64 bit without any problems

 

Re: Replacing Vista 32 with Win 7 64 whiel maintaining Dualboot configuration with Ub

32-bit to 64-bit?

As was the case with Windows Vista, Microsoft will not support in-place upgrading of any 32-bit Windows version to any 64-bit Windows 7 product edition. You will need to do a clean install instead.

From here: http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/win7_skus.asp

You will have to dual boot again...

Cheers...

 

Re: Replacing Vista 32 with Win 7 64 whiel maintaining Dualboot configuration with Ub

I would rather leave the 32-bit there just in case of trouble, create a new partition for W7 and install it there. You should now have a dual boot with W7 and Vista but then you will lose the *nix manager. I am not a *nix master but there must be a simple way to reinstall *nix boot mgr without going through the whole installation process again by using the verbose CLI install method.

One main thing to do before anything is to make sure there are X64 Vista drivers available for your machine. Also, you may have to install W7 stopping driver signing checks. Good luck.

 

Re: Replacing Vista 32 with Win 7 64 whiel maintaining Dualboot configuration with Ub

I found 64bit windows 7 installation a breeze, it loaded all the required drivers for all my hardware without a problem, printer/fax/scanner included.

Nvidia have windows 7 64bit compatible drivers on their site already if you want to upgrade from the ones windows installed.

It will nuke the Grub bootloader in your MBR, but, its easy enough to get back. You can find plenty of how-to's on ubuntuforums.org... search for "reinstall grub"

Re, partitioning: Your best bet is to create another partition from within Ubuntu using the Gparted tool (heaps more powerful than the windows offering) format it NTFS and use that partition as your file repository for both systems.

I would do this first before looking to install windows 7. Gparted is quite good in that you can resize partitions and generally move things about, but, be careful...

you can find some good info on partitioning schemes here (the idea of creating a separate partition for the windows virtual memory is a bit of a myth, so ignore that)

I've got windows 7 consuming 20Gb of a 30Gb partition without any worries so far, you may want to increase that to suit your own needs, I'm not a gamer so don't have too many huge apps.

Good luck