Win7 32&64bit
Community Forums/General Help/Win7 32&64bit
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| Hi, just installed Win7 64bit today and I am very impressed at how much the installation procedure has improved over other versions. My question is, can I install the 32 bit version to one drive and the 64 bit version on another in the same PC (can only use one version at a time) using a single licence key or would I need 2 keys? |
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| May I ask why you need the 32 bit version when you already have the 64 bit version installed? The 64 bit version runs all 32 bit programs with no problems ... |
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| I was thinking of running 32bit just in case I wanted to add something that only had 32bit drivers available. The 64bit install is just for Sonar and my music devices all of which have 64bit drivers available. |
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| Typically, if there are two ways to interprete a microsoft licensing question, whichever option makes them the most money tends to be the correct one. ;-) Everything I found when I last looked at this is that microsoft does require two seperate licenses for a dual boot, although I don't have a link to back that up. Alternatively, if you happen to have Windows 7 Enterprise: its license allows a single virtualized instance of itself as well as the 'real' one. |
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| I'd say you should worry about this when you actually find something that doesn't work on x64 |
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| May I ask why you need the 32 bit version when you already have the 64 bit version installed? The 64 bit version runs all 32 bit programs with no problems ... Not everything -- most modern programs will work, but older ones or programs that try to hook into the OS will likely fail unless they have a 64 bit version. When I made the jump to 64 bit I went through the trouble of creating a dual boot between Vista x64 and Windows XP, and found that I didn't boot into XP a single time for a full year. There were a few applications that caused problems, but all of them either had updated versions that were compatible with 64 bit, or had equal/better alternatives available. the one program that it took me a while to find a working version for was the 'awk' command line utility -- my old copy turned out to be 16 bit, and wouldn't launch under 64 bit at all. |
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| Another reason for using the 32bit is so I can upgrade my Vista 32bit install. You can't 'upgrade' to Win7 64bit since it requires a fresh install. |
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