I’d like to upgrade my fiancee’s Gateway computer (GT5476E) to Win 7. It has 2 GB of RAM, but the MS Win 7 Upgrade Advisor says that only 1.9 is available, and that I therefore can’t upgrade it to 64-bit.
Should I take that as the final word? What happens if I try to install it anyway? It won’t let me? Crash? Work poorly? Work okay?
Thanks.
I think it would probably work, albeit poorly. The bigger question is why you want to upgrade to 64-bit Windows 7, since, unless you have 4 GB or more of RAM, 64-bit Windows is worse than 32-bit. My advice is to go ahead and install 32-bit Windows 7.
What Silophant said. Even though 64-bit would probably work ok, with a max of 2 GB of RAM there’s really no benefit for you to go with 64-bit.
The reason is that I bought the 64-bit version, assuming that I could upgrade the machine to 4GB, and only later found out that its max is 2GB. 
I can use the 64-bit disk for another machine, but I was wondering what would happen if I just went ahead anyway.
your system supports a 64-bit OS, so there’s no harm in trying, I guess, if you have the time on your hands (And all of your important data backed up!!!) I don’t think MS is saying your system can’t run the 64-bit version, but that they don’t recommend it due to the relatively low amount of memory.
is your version the retail box? What version of 7 is it (Home Premium?) I have the retail version of Home Premium and I got both 32- and 64-bit discs in the box.
It’s the student discount Pro Upgrade, so I only have the 64-bit version. I’d have to buy the 32-bit separately, but it’s $65, half the price of the regular upgrade package, so not a bad deal.
The reason I asked the OP is that I don’t want to spend a lot of time setting it up if the install won’t complete, or if it won’t perform well. The 32-bit version will do for this machine, so that’s what I’ll get.
Thanks for the info.
I run 64bit Win7 on a 2 GB machine. There is no real difference, good or bad.
And all Win7 keys should be good for a 32bit install or 64bit install, so long as you have the media.
I’d check this out before you spend more money. My key gave me the option of 32 or 64 bit.
Nothing will happen, it will work fine.
Now I’m puzzled.
Perhaps Silophant and jz78817 would care to discuss their experiences which led them to somewhat different conclusions than yoyodyne. Or perhaps yoyodyne would care to expand on his response.
I had 2G of memory and the 64 bit OS was having errors with some programs. The 32 bit OS wasn’t. Adding more 4G more took care of the 64 bit OS program problems I was having. I would stick with the 32 bit OS for that computer.
I personally haven’t really noticed anything better about the 64 bit upgrade I’ve done to my computer.
I was told it was better but I really think that, at this time, at the average consumer level, the difference is so small as to be not worth the trouble.
A few years back, you would even have trouble finding drivers for things.
If you are upgrading from vista, I would just stick to the 32 bit, you can still upgrade ram later if you need to.
The only way I would think you could not upgrade the ram would be a laptop, or a motherboard with only 1 ram slot. For those scenarios, I would wait to upgrade to a newer computer first.
WUA is spewing rubbish. I’ve got a box here which had only that and W7 64 bit installed and ran just fine.
Note that the missing memory is likely shared memory allocated to the display. See Gateway’s specification page here. Drop in a dedicated graphics card and you’ll get it back. Note that 2 GB is the maximum memory the PC can take.
Do note, though, that you cannot do an in-place upgrade from a 32 bit OS to a 64 bit OS, and you cannot upgrade directly from XP to W7-32 - though you may be able to use Vista as an intermediate step.
As to why put W7-64 on such a box, I’m sure you have your reasons but for me, it was the increased security and conformity with my other boxes.