Vista Home Premium 64 bit Upgrade from Vista Home Basic 32 bit operating system

My neighbor bought a Compaq Presario with an AMD Athlon 64 bit processor
which came installed with Windows Vista Home Basic 32 bit operating system.
If he buys the upgrade to Windows Home Premium will the disk recognize he
has a 64 bit processor and install the 64 bit operating system and not just
upgrade to 32 bit Vista Home Premium system.

No. He will have to buy the 64 bit version if he wishes to run 64 bit.
Vista has only one version on each DVD - either 32 bit or 64 bit. If he
opts for the 64 bit version, he should check to ensure 64 bit drivers
are available for all of his devices beforehand.

The vista home basic 64 bit only costs 9.95 delivered to your door, just
go to miscrosft and find the link, the same license for 32 bit works for
the 64 bit version.

If you go to the Home Premium, same thing......the license works for 32
bit or 64. But I think you have to order the 64 bit from microsft
because as I? hear it, no one stocks the 64 bit Home Premium.

He should save his money and wait until October to get Windows 7, what Vista
should have been.
Judging from the release candidate this is a worthwhile "upgrade" where as
the XP to Vista change is kind of pointless.
If you do not know under what specific circumstances you would benefit from
a 64 bit OS there is no reason to choose the 64 bit version and many reasons
not to, most specifically lack of drivers for many peripherals that have
fully functional 32 bit Vista drivers.

Yup! I agree. Been running Win7, both beta and RC, and it is superior to
Vista in almost all respects. Release to the public is supposed to be
sometime around mid October. Pricing has yet to be announced.

Be sure your neighbor knows that ANY transition from 32-bit to 64-bit - or
vice versa - will require a "Clean Install". That means a reformatting the
partition, installing the new Windows, then re-installing all applications
from their original media. Data can be backed up and restored. But most
apps, even if the files are in place on the HDD, will need to be reinstalled
so that the new Windows can make the necessary entries in its new Registry.

This "clean install" requirement is because of the hardware and driver
differences between 32-bit and 64-bit. It is independent of any licensing
issues or even about an upgrade to Premium or to Win7. (Win7 should be
available at retail on October 22, 2009.)

The product key is not the same after you buy the 64bit dvd from Microsoft.
You will need to call them and they will give u a new key free of charge. I
know I had to do this

I just did it myself, and the product key for 32bit was the same key I
used for the 64 bit. You may have had other recent upgrades that
triggered a phone call. I have experienced that after adding other
upgrades, video card, hard drive, memory, etc... to my system too.

I appreciate all the replies. I am running Windows Vista Home Premium 64
myself and have not had any significant problems. I was unable to find the
reference to the $9.95 upgrade on the Microsoft Canada site but I will
suggest to my neighbor that he call them. I will help him with the " Clean
Install " as I have performed a similar process several times while I was
running Windows XP.

The 9.95 Vista 64 bit installation DVD is available to users who purchased a
retail copy of Vista that did not already include both DVDs in the package.
It does not come with a new product key the key from the retail 32 bit
version is what is used. If the 32 bit DVD has already been installed phone
activation will be required to obtain a new product ID in order to activate
the 64 bit installation. You can perform a clean install of the 64 bit
version on top of the 32 bit version without reformatting and if you do your
32 bit files will be saved in a folder named "Windows.old"
which you can delete after you copied any files from it that you want.