How to downgrade from vista 64 bit to 32 bit

Answered by:. Archived Forums. Windows Vista Deployment and Imaging. Sign in to vote. Hello, I have a user who has a 64 bit version of Windows Home Premium installed on their laptop. I need to know if there is a way to reformat the drive and install Vista Business 32 bit. These don't sound like 64 bit processors. Would I have a problem using these on the new OS? Thursday, January 8, AM.

HP does not provide separate system disks, there is a 'Recovery Partition', should be the D: drive. I do not know if these disks have both the 32 and 64 bit versions of the OS. Also, make sure that you have all of your programs and data off the PC and ready to reload, my previous experience with such system disks it that they are pretty much a Format and Re-install process, so be ready. HP also does not provide hard copy of the documentation with some computers.

I recently discovered the User's Manual in the program listing of the Start menu. What software is it that doesn't run? I've not come across many pieces of software that don't work in bit. It's an insurance agency management software called "Doris". The program itself works fine, but the import and export features which are probably the most important features are what seem to be having problems in a bit environment.

Thanks everyone, I will report back after trying a few of the recommendations above. If you have anything else to add - please do. I will be checking this periodically throughout the day. I checked with my friend about his problems and he said he was having trouble with a propietary network scheduling program that involves a lot of logical calculations and printouts of charts and activities. He has his programmer working on it now. I went to Amazon. At this point I am pretty pissed off because sitting next to me is my shiny XP CD and I am literally begging the computer to just read it and say that its ok, I am not a pirate trying to steal software.

I end up biting the bullet and installing XP and then doing the stupid upgrade I hate upgrades too. I was worried that it would leave an older version of NTFS on there, but as far as I can tell all the Vista features which consists of symlinks work. Later I found a nice workaround that negates the entire process and makes Microsoft look really stupid.

Using this process this could have been the first time you used Windows and you can use the upgrade option. Way to go Microsoft. If securing your upgrade versions from pirates and users who are not really upgrading was your goal, you utterly failed. In the process you managed to make everyone else jump through hoops.

But maybe if they never made such a ridiculously buggy and incompatible operating system a absolutely appauling cost. After all, if people never used pirated versions of windows, imagine how much money they wouldve spent on microsoft by now and they still wouldnt be satisfied, and probably never will be. I know i am not satisfied, in fact i completely despise microsoft windows full-stop, every single version has been a failure, why rather than fooling around with upgrades, cant they just get it right first time.

Im sick of windows fucking me around, and linux isnt exactly very user friendly and i dont have the time to learn it i have more important goals in life. But until then, the whole point of this post is.. Hi is there a way i can have the best of both worlds and install both 32 and 64 bit? I tried to dual boot XP with vista last time and it went horribly wrong, i didnt create a partion and i couldnt get back to vista so i had to lose all my data and reintall vista.

So i was wandering how i go about doing this properly. It has something to do with the way the two different processing bases load that once started, the system would have to shut down to switch, and in shutting down, it would bring your right back to select again!

I want to downgrade too. I have a very awesome hot rod system, but x64 is still laggy in it. If I go to click a hyperlink, the system waits for a couple seconds after I click it in order to execute the click. And yes you can run a 32 bit and 64 bit system on the same computer, just not from the same hard drive. If you have two internal drives, unplug one of them, and then load the OS you want one the active drive. Then do the opposite — now unplug the one you just used, plug in the one that was unplugged, and install the other OS.

Now you have two drives — one with the 32 bit OS on it, and one with the 64 bit OS on it, and both of them are configured to work with your existing hardware. This is where it gets tricky, though. There are two ways that I know of to load the OS of choice. One is to physically unplug power or data the drive that you do NOT want to load, and just fire up the system.