My school very generously offers software for free to students, and one of those is Windows 7 Pro x64. I'm currently running the same but x86, and want to upgrade to x64.

I'm well aware that you cant just run the setup.exe and "upgrade" to x64, but you need to do a clean install. So I extract the Windows 7 ISO file, burn the resulting files onto a DVD, set my BIOS to boot from the DVD drive, and restart.

Then I get "BOOTMGR missing. Press CTRL+Alt+Delete to restart"

Right now I'm working on formatting a thumb drive to attempt to install via USB instead of DVD, but does anyone have any help on this? The net is full of BOOTMGR issues, but none that I've seen specifically deal with someone going from x86 to x64, and not being able to boot from the DVD.

You should use imgburn (free software) to put an .iso onto a CD/DVD



That shouldn't yield boot issues.

I have never gone from x86 to x64 before but because you are already running win7 you dont need to do a clean install. The worse that can happen is that it creates a "windows.old" folder were it has everything you downloaded to your computer.

There are plenty of free iso burners.

i suggest you format your drive and perform a clean install

upgrade install isnt a good idea unless it happens in bussiness environment

i suggest you format your drive and perform a clean install

upgrade install isnt a good idea unless it happens in bussiness environment

I'V NEVER HAD A PROBLEMS WITH IT?AND I'V DONE IT PLENTY OF TIMES ON MY COMPUTER.

i suggest you format your drive and perform a clean install

upgrade install isnt a good idea unless it happens in bussiness environment

I'V NEVER HAD A PROBLEMS WITH IT?AND I'V DONE IT PLENTY OF TIMES ON MY COMPUTER.

a clean install of windows 7 x64 will take less than 20mins on a modern computer with image burned in flashdrive

upgrade install is another story especially your software dependency is complicated for instance vistual studio is installed, the immigration can be nightmare

For photoshop users you won't have 64bit binary untill you reinstall it under your upgraded x64.

I always keep my user data dirctory out of my c drive to prevent reinstall data loss

You just have to do a clean install is the best option. Some motherboards do not work the way you're doing, try to F12, F11, F2 at boot and select your DVD-ROM.

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool

Thanks for the replies. I actually got past that issue by using a thumb drive as my boot disk, and I was able to get to the screen where you choose/create partitions. Now when I selected my main partition, it told me that it couldnt find or create any valid partitions. I deleted each partition on both of my HDD's, created new ones (everything was backed up thankfully), and it still wont let me choose a partition, even though I just created one. Bummer lol.

I would try disconnecting ALL extras, including the extra hard drive(s). Not using RAID, right? BIOS set to AHCI for a SATA drive?

Those don't help then wiping clean the drive may help, or repairing MBR, etc. with TestDisk 6.12.

Also, did you use the Microsoft tool to create the bootable flash drive? If you downloaded the Windows image, it may be corrupt - rare but it does happen.

Also, did you use the Microsoft tool to create the bootable flash drive? If you downloaded the Windows image, it may be corrupt - rare but it does happen.

very rare, but happened to me a couple of times when handling tons of windows XP images.

Had a bad SBS 2011 image that stumped me for a while earlier this year.

depending on your mobo, chipset
may have to pre-install raid drivers
even if your not using the drives in an array