Shoutbox

Basically... I have a laptop that has 32bit Windows Vista but it has 4gb of ram

Because of the 32bit I can only use 3gb.

I found this is it possible to install 64bit windows 7 on the new partition and take full advantage of the ram?

Is there any complications from doing this?


Thanks

Do you have a 64 bit processor?

yep

I wouldn't imagine so however Windows 7 is far superior than Windows Vista... why keep Vista? To me that would be a waste of space.

Definitely possible, and will work.

Look into PAE first, as you may be able to use 4GB on 32bit should your BIOS support Memory Remapping. (edit: However I just realized the latter is Windows 7, so dunno, install Win 7 x64 )

its a pretty new laptop... just I purchased it for uni just before the uptake of 64bit... if it does support PAE how difficult is it to set up?

is it something u have done before?

I know you can definitely shrink a hard-drive like that

I have Vista installed on an old machine at work at shrank the hard-drive into two partitions to test the Win7 beta on it....and successfully reversed it again.

One thing to note is that it'll replace the bootloader, so you'll have to rebuild the Vista bootloader if you ever do decide to get rid of Win7.......but I'd echo the sentiments above.....Vista is just Win7 done very badly, scrap it off and use the whole hard-drive for Win7

quote:

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Originally posted by M73A
its a pretty new laptop... just I purchased it for uni just before the uptake of 64bit... if it does support PAE how difficult is it to set up?

is it something u have done before?

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Takes like 1 command in the command prompt

Open command prompt as administrator
enter: BCDEdit /set PAE forceenable

Assuming your BIOS supports it (and is enabled if you can enable it, it's possible the option doesn't exist in the bios but it supports it by default).....right click Computer -> Properties

Should no longer show "(3.0GB Useable)" and be 4GB

I've tried it on 3 machines in the past, but none of them support it.

if my machine doesnt support it will anything go wrong?

if i restart and it still shows 3gb how do i disable it?

quote:

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Originally posted by M73A
if my machine doesnt support it will anything go wrong?

if i restart and it still shows 3gb how do i disable it?

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Nothing will go wrong.

Even keeping it enabled won't do anything wrong, but if you really want to.

BCDEdit /set PAE forcedisable