Meeting the Free Upgrade Deadline

dlwmacgregor said:

In post #10 I mentioned that it was 64-bit. I don't have a copy of 32-bit Win7.
The Celeron 336 is a full 64-bit CPU.

No, you did not.

You said that you were trying to install the 64 bit version of Windows 10. I might have assumed that you were installing it as an upgrade over Win 7 X64, since you couldn't install it over X86. I admit that I forget what sort of message you'd have gotten if you tried to upgrade Win 7 X86 to Win 10 X64.

I did a little checking. As far as I could find, the Celeron D336 is supposed to support all of the extensions required for Win 10 X64. If the Win 10 installer isn't at fault, it could be that the PC's motherboard would require a BIOS update to expose all of the features of the Celeron. As you haven't told us what motherboard the machine has, it's hard to help you locate a newer BIOS (if one exists).

Sorry that you're running out of time on this. I doubt that the value of the PC would justify a new Win 10 license purchase.

dlwmacgregor said:

I already installed Win10 64 bit on my main PC (listed under My System Specs). How could I install Win10 32-bit 360 days ago if I just "found" this PC in a garage sale?

Valid reason, I apologize.

bobkn said:

If the Win 10 installer isn't at fault, it could be that the PC's motherboard would require a BIOS update to expose all of the features of the Celeron.

I considered that. There was a BIOS update for the motherboard (Gigabyte GA-8S661FXM-775) named F4 - Update CPU Microcode. The problem was that I couldn't get the PC to see the floppy drive to write the update to (and then read from).

No biggie.

Thanks for all your help. I learned something at least.

dlwmacgregor said:

I considered that. There was a BIOS update for the motherboard (Gigabyte GA-8S661FXM-775) named F4 - Update CPU Microcode. The problem was that I couldn't get the PC to see the floppy drive to write the update to (and then read from).

No biggie.

Thanks for all your help. I learned something at least.

I wonder whether the board's SIS chipset has some limitations that might not be present in an Intel board.

Moot now, I suppose.

Too bad that you ran out of time.

You are saying that I could upgrade my copy of 64-bit Windows 7 to 32-bit Windows 10?

Well I took one more kick at the can to try and upgrade to 64-bit Windows 10 over the weekend. I managed to copy the BIOS upgrade to floppy using DOS commands (ah, good ol' DOS) and upgrade the MB to F4 (for those of you who are curious about the Gigabyte GA-8S661FXM-775 MB. I still got the same error messages about LAHF and PrefetchW.

cereberus said:

You cannot upgrade any windows os from 32 bit to 64 bit- you would have to reinstall from scratch.
.

As I said, I'm trying to go from 64-bit to 32-bit.

dlwmacgregor said:

As I said, I'm trying to go from 64-bit to 32-bit.

To put it in other words, changing from 32-bit to 64-bit or 64-bit to 32-bit requires a clean install, wipe the HDD and start from scratch. There is no upgrade from one bitness to another. Same applies to the myriad versions of Linux. Mac OS X is a bit different, I had the 32-bit version of Snow Leopard and was able to upgrade to Mountain Lion then change it to the 64-bit version without having to do a clean install.

Thanks. I should have researched it before.
I'm still going to ask Microsoft Support to clarify why I am getting the error messages when they clearly do not apply.
I HAVE to know the answer.