Upgrade win 32-bit to win 64-bit with electronic license

[DominicusB]

I have a working windows 10 32 bit installation on vmware Fusion 8.5.x and my original install was an win7 home edition that was upgraded last summer for free to win 10. It was obviously 32 bit.

I would like to upgrade to win 10 64 bit, but I don't have a valid physical license key to do a new install

If I try to upgrade the existing installation (from the windows client - using a virtual dvd) it says that I cannot install on that platform (I think it's due to existing 32-bit installation).

What can be done to upgrade it using a dvd BUT retaining the original installation to have the license transfer over?

Is there any other workaround?

Sincerely,

Dominicus

[vijayrana968]

Never possible to upgrade a 32-bit OS to 64-bit. All you can do, get a new license and deploy new Win 10 64-bit and migrate data over.

[wila]

Hi,

You can't upgrade as Microsoft has no upgrade path from 32 bits to 64 bits.

That's pretty weird IMO, but what you can do besides buying a new license is to boot from the install CD and then run a FULL install.

As your virtual machine hardware ID is stored at Microsoft you then do not need to provide a new license it will license itself.

I strongly suggest to make a backup of your virtual machine to an external disk before going down this path.

You should make a backup with the VM shutdown and Fusion not running.

Please be aware that a "Time Machine Backup" does not count as a valid backup of a virtual machine.

NOTE: that the FULL install will overwrite and delete everything you have on that virtual machine.

--

Wil

[DominicusB · Accepted solution]

OK

I tested to upgrade the 32-bit version to a 64-bit version by letting the client use my dvd as startup disk (boot from dvd). I had previously loaded the installation media of win10 64-bit as a virtual cd/dvd.

The upgrade went well and it upgraded the system as a new system but preserved the old system in a folder called windows.old

So practically - all went well and the license got picked up correctly from the old client (win 10 32-bit)

So it's doable allright and no loss - or some manual file managing, but now I have a new win 10 64-bit system running

Just to let someone else know also,

Dominicus

[royal1993]

Thanks for all

we have  32bit win7 OS  in our VM machines  clients

but  we see  not support al our applications  wnat upgrade to 64 bit

also another reason  our apps   require more than 4 GB RAM

i have 5 servers  one clusters each server has 48 Gb RAM   Dell R420 and i have 70 VM machines and View server and vcenter  and  onther servers for kasper security in the clusters

i need best advice