sextooth Posted July 3, 2007 Report Share Posted July 3, 2007 Alright here's what's going on: I'm gonna be doing a rather large upgrade on my computer soon and want to have two operating systems going; one will be windows XP 32 bit and the other will be windows vista. Windows XP will be my primary one. What I'm trying to do right now is roll back my computer from windows XP 64 bit to Windows XP 32 bit pro without having to lose all my programs, but I'm having problems. I've heard that when you install 64 bit it makes the 32 bit windows void or something like that. So to get around this I downloaded a fresh copy of Windows XP 32 bit (with service pack 2) from an MSDN subscription my school has (it's legal and should be valid is what I'm trying to say) and burned it onto a CD. I've tried to install 32 bit from windows itself but I can't click on the "install Windows XP" button nor can I check for system compatibility when the CD starts up. So I tried booting my computer using the CD. I've tried to install it there but when I do it does not detect the 64 bit windows that is already on there unless I go to the recovery console. If I go to "setup windows XP now" it won't see the 64 bit windows and will simply give me the option to start a fresh install by formatting one of my hard drives and I don't want to do this. Anyway, if you guys have any idea as to how I can roll back my windows OS from 64 bit to 32 bit without losing all my programs I'd greatly appreciate it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted July 3, 2007 Report Share Posted July 3, 2007 Welcome to the Windows Forum.When you say "roll back" - was your 64-bit XP an upgrade from 32-bit? If so, it may be possible to roll back via Add/Remove Programs. However, I doubt it.I don't know if you can "downgrade" from 64-bit to 32-bit; eminently you have difficulties doing that.The easiest would be if you had taken a full system backup before upgrading - you could simply restore it to its original state. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sextooth Posted July 3, 2007 Author Report Share Posted July 3, 2007 Welcome to the Windows Forum.When you say "roll back" - was your 64-bit XP an upgrade from 32-bit? If so, it may be possible to roll back via Add/Remove Programs. However, I doubt it.I don't know if you can "downgrade" from 64-bit to 32-bit; eminently you have difficulties doing that.The easiest would be if you had taken a full system backup before upgrading - you could simply restore it to its original state.Thanks. I did have 32 bit windows before, but I remember I had a lot of problems trying to do a straight upgrade, so I just did a clean install. Unfortanetly I didn't do a full system backup when I did this, I just backed up the bare essentials. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted July 4, 2007 Report Share Posted July 4, 2007 Well, obviously you cannot "downgrade" 64-bit Windows to 32-bit, so you have no other option than to format and install from scratch. You can backup all your document data and restore it to 32-bit Windows, but you will have to install all your programs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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